


Marathon

by itsxandy



Series: The Fedora Verse [2]
Category: DCU - Comicverse, The Flash (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Action, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Criminals, Community: yj_anon_meme, Crime Fighting, Drama, Gen, M/M, Organized Crime, Prompt Fic, so much drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-23 08:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 42,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/620101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsxandy/pseuds/itsxandy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wally accidentally becomes a part of the Flash's Rogues gallery and continues to make a lot of bad choices and even more enemies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There were maybe a little over two hundred students in the auditorium, which was probably an average size for an introductory course to psychology. A few TAs walked up and down the aisles, passing out syllabuses to students as they arrived, all of them waiting for the professor to finish setting up his laptop and hooking it up to the projector behind him. 

Wally wasn’t sure why Iris had insisted on this class specifically. The teacher was a well-known psychologist from Gotham, moving from there to teach as this university, and had a reputation for assigning more coursework than a teacher of an elective course had a right to assign. There were easier professors teaching this exact same course who had better ratings online. Wally wasn’t even sure why he was bothering with this class; he was starting to consider dropping it while he could and taking it later until he saw Hunter passing him by down the aisles with a stack of papers, handing a sheet over to a student who had walked in without taking one. 

 _Aunt Iris_.

Wally covered his face with a hand, shaking his head, before looking up to see that Hunter had noticed him at the exact same time, pulling an almost hilarious doubletake. He hadn’t expected to see Wally in this class either; it slightly mollified Wally to know that they hadn’t  _both_  been blatantly manipulating him. 

As the class finally began to settle and the papers finished shuffling, the professor began the introductory slideshow to his class, starting with his name, credentials, and office hours, and Wally immediately stopped paying attention. He already read the syllabus and knew what the man was going to go over today. 

As the professor began talking about his name and office hours and grading policies, Wally felt his phone rumble in his pocket as he received a text message.. 

Hunter:  _Here’s to hoping your phones on silent_  
Hunter:  _Hey_  
Wally:  _It’s a big class. I doubt he’d know who it came from._  
Hunter:  _Wouldn’t put too much stock in that_  
Hunter:  _Aerons can be like a heatseeking missile_  
Hunter:  _He will find you_  
Wally:  _So how’s Artemis?_  
Hunter:  _What_  
Hunter:  _Oh_  
Hunter:  _Finally cut her hair_  
Hunter:  _Oh_  
Hunter:  _How’s your mom?_

Wally swallowed and stopped, not sure of how to answer the question. She was okay. A bit battered with both legs and a wrist injured, but she’d be back on her feet sooner or later. But phrasing it so easily left a bad taste in his mouth when it had been his fault in the first place. He’d brought his father to Central. He hadn’t thought twice as to why his father would suddenly start talking to him again, and because of that, he ruined an entire chunk of the Central, and the amount of collateral damage he’d caused had been huge. It hadn’t just been his mother. People got hurt. Some people  _died_.

He suddenly instinctively looked up and to find Hunter watching him, but the TA immediately looked back down at his own phone, and Wally realized he’d left him without an answer to the question. 

Wally:  _She made it out better than some people._  
Hunter:  _Shutting up_  
Hunter:  _Oh that’s lucky_  
Hunter:  _I mean in that it could’ve been worse_  
Hunter:  _Sorry I wasn’t there_

 _No, It was my—_  Wally stopped himself, looking at the text deleted that one before sending it.

 _You didn’t do anything—_. 

 _Whatev—_  Wally didn’t get to finish that text, looking up at the jarring sound of a man clearing his throat loudly in the microphone and a small wave of laughter from his classmates. He looked up to see the professor staring pointedly at Hunter, the slide behind him discussing his class policies and the use of cell phones during his lectures. 

Hunter quickly put his cell phone away with an embarrassed cough, his lips pressed tightly together, looking unsure if he wanted to laugh off his embarrassment or just hide his face. Wally helped him decide on his reaction, sending him another text message that had Hunter’s phone vibrating in his pocket, and almost immediately, Hunter glared at Wally, looking completely unamused by the act.

Wally gave him a small wave and a brazen grin and wondered if he was going to regret this. 

* * *

By the age of eleven, Wally had pretty much given up any notion of ever being like the Flash. He had never figured out how the Flash formula had worked, and the science programs in Blue Valley were really nothing in comparison to the one he was in when he was in Central. Save your dreams for when you sleep, his father would tell him none too cruelly, whenever he noticed Wally’s disappointment. It was a motto that Wally followed up until he went to his aunt’s wedding, until he met the real Barry—the Flash, he pieced together by the end of the reception. And then the dream came back. He wanted to be like the Flash. He wanted to be more like his hero. He wanted to stand next to the Flash, his  _uncle_ , and wanted the world to know who he was.

Funny, how life turns out. 

Now, he was maybe friends with the Flash’s  _real_  partner; he ate lunch every day with the Flash’s wife; he was a temporary guest under the Flash’s roof; and he moonlighted as a thief with the Flash’s arch-nemeses. The Flash was Wally’s hero, and Wally was the Flash’s villain, and the irony sometimes made Wally want to plant his face in a pillow and laugh hysterically—and maybe cry a little too. It’d worry his mother if he acted out though, so Wally usually tried to keep his theatrics at a minimum and keep himself busy. 

It helped to have hobbies. 

“I’m betting twenty bucks he picks all ten locks in fifteen minutes.”

“Forty says he does it in ten.”

“Feh. The Kid ain’t  _that_  good.”

Wally did it in under eight minutes and grinned cheekily as most of the Rogues’ winnings went to him. 

“I  _‘ain’t that good’_ , huh?” he grinned cheekily at Captain Cold, who held up his money but didn’t let go as Wally tugged on it. “ _‘Scuse_  me, Cold, but you kind of lost this fair and square.”

“As I recall, you owe a fee,” Cold said. “While you were knocking off stores,  _we_ were fighting the Flash.”

“Oh, right,” Wally said, his grin wiped away by the constant reminder of just what side he was currently standing on. He counted out what he felt he had rightfully earned as tonight’s entertainment for the Rogues and handed Cold the money that he owed him for the other day’s job.

“You know,” Cold said, rubbing the bruised bridge of his nose, “you ought to learn how to fend for yourself. Can’t complain too much since we’re making easy money off you, but playing the diversion for speedsters gets old  _real_  fast. Zoom doesn’t pull punches.” 

“Yeah,” Captain Boomerang muttered. “He’s kind of a dick that way. Maybe you should start carrying your own weight.”

“I do carry my own weight,” Wally argued. “In money. And I never asked any of you guys for help. All I want is for you to tell me when or where you pull a job so we don’t end up tripping each other up.”

“Giving that information to someone we don’t know makes getting stabbed in the back real easy. If we can’t even trust you to stand your ground, we can’t trust you at all,” someone said. Wally turned around to see the Pied Piper standing behind him as he pulled down his hood, hair still wet from the light rain outside. 

“I don’t care if you trust me at all,” Wally snorted. He didn’t need their trust or even their teamwork. He just needed their reputation, so people would stay out of his way. Wally might’ve been willing to start considering these crooks his colleagues, at least, but he wasn’t so deluded that he would call them friends. As Wally spoke, the newly arrived green-clad Rogue slid into a nearby seat and handed Cold a folded piece of cloth, slightly dampened. It seemed flat, but Piper gave Cold a grim look, and the Rogue leader managed to look even more irritable than he already always did. There was something about that cloth. Or in it.

“Maybe you should rethink that,” Cold finally said, though his attention was focused on the folded handkerchief as he pulled up an edge to examine the contents. Something flat, but probably not money. “Because that little trust we’ve got is the only reason we haven’t booted you from the team.”

“So you do trust me? That’s pretty heartwarming, coming from—” he said, but Cold interrupted him, dropping a few strips of small white sheets down in front of Wally with a snappy flick of the wrist. Wally stared at the small white rectangles, picking them up and turning them over. The sheets weren’t for writing on; the material was more like plastic and rubber than paper, and the edges were uneven where someone had cut them. It took him a few moments to figure out what they were. “Transdermal patches?” he tried. 

“Guessed that one pretty easily,” Cold said.

“Well, I  _am_  a genius,” Wally pointed out to them, but Cold didn’t look particularly impressed. 

“What do you know about them?”

“A  _lot_. There are five different types of patches, all good for controlling the release of a drug over a certain period of time…” he paused, looking at the cut edges. “You shouldn’t cut these things though. You’ll make them dry out and mess up the diffusion rate—”

“ _It’s Velocity 9._ ”

The Rogues were watching Wally with a look that made Wally realize it was supposed to mean something. 

“That means…  _nothing_  to me,” Wally said. “What is it?”

“It’s a speed drug. Causes hyperactivity, hypertension, restlessness—”

“Wait, you’re describing speed, like,  _meth_?” Wally asked, looking at the patch. He was pretty sure it was usually injected, smoked, or snorted. This was different. 

“I’m describing speed like speed.  _Superspeed_ ,” Cold said to him. “Kind of like what you have. You see, someone’s been going around talking about their miracle drug, marketing it as the newest generation of Velocity. They’re saying they’ve got a formula for superspeed that’s as good as the Flash’s. I think you can see where this is going.”

He could. He could feel it in the pit of his stomach, too, like he had just swallowed a rock. Cold was looking particularly unamused, and Wally remembered the Rogues mentioning at one point an intolerance towards drugs. “I didn’t know anything about this stuff, I swear,” he insisted, looking down at the small patches on the table. “Despite, you know, knowing a lot of drug facts.”

“So you come up in here able to run faster than sound, and then a drug shows up that allows people to do the exact same thing, and you expect us to believe you had nothing to do with it?”

“Yes?” Wally tried. 

“He’s telling the truth,” Piper interjected. 

Wally looked at him in confusion as to how Piper could say so with that kind of certainty, but Cold simply took the other Rogue’s word for it and turned back to Wally with a frown that seemed less threatening. Just the usual suspicion.

“So you  _don’t_  have anything to do with this drug,” he said. “Not even your family?”

“Why would my family have this stuff?” Wally asked. 

“Your father mentioned you were connected to something, told us to stay off your back.”

Wally’s heart began to race at the mentioned of his father. It’d been a week since that East Grey fiasco, and he hadn’t been able to track Rudy down since. There was no lead as to where he’d gone, and Wally had given up within days. 

Was his dad behind this? The possibility hadn’t occurred to him until now. He hadn’t known why his father had taken the formula, but this… this would explain it.

Wally snorted convincingly, if he said so himself. “Maybe it was paternal instinct,” he joked, ignoring the anger welling in his stomach. He probably wanted them to keep their hands off Wally until he could get his hands on the prototype Flash formula, but did he know the truth? Did he know Barry was the Flash? “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I don’t know anybody important. It’s just me and my mom.” 

Piper shifted from foot to foot, glancing at the other Rogues and then back at Wally, as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to say something. 

“Well,” Cold finally said after a brief moment of silent as he mulled over the recent activities. “If your mom is the head of a drug operation, give us a heads up.”

“I’m just going to take these—” Wally said, leaning forward to scoop up the Velocity 9, but Cold stopped him, grabbing him by the sleeve of his shirt as a warning.

“What do you think you’re going to do with it?” he asked coolly. All the other Rogues were watching, and Wally knew better than to try to wrench his wrist out of the grip and risk more of them stepping in.

“I got a lab. I’m doing lab stuff,” he said in an overly patient voice. “You don’t just shove this kind of stuff in my face and expect me to leave it alone, do you? Or do you think I’d take it? I don’t know if you noticed, I don’t  _need_  any speed boost.”

It was technically true. Especially when he didn’t know all the side effects that could come with taking a drug like this. Wally just needed a sample. If the formula closely matched the one that’d been stolen, then…

Wally chewed the inside of his lip.

Then his father was selling the formula as a drug for a profit.

Wally’s fist clenched around the patches and he looked up at Cold in defiance, ignoring every instinct that told him,  _stop, stop, this is a bad idea_. Before anything could break out between the two of them, Piper interrupted the staring contest, lightly nudging Cold’s wrist and the leader gave in, releasing Wally from his grasp. 

Wally looked up at Cold, wary but not backing down now that Cold had given Wally his nonverbal acceptance.

“The things’re fatal,” Cold warned. “Supposedly takes prolonged use to get you really going, but people’s hearts haven’t been handling it. Still a prototype.”

“Well,  _that’s_  total crap,” Wally muttered, and he sincerely absolutely honest-to-god hoped it wasn’t his father’s doing, because if it was, then it was his experiment that was killing people. “How can you market something that’s going to kill all your customers?”

Cold made a noise of agreement before joining the other Rogues. The loss of attention marked the end of Wally’s impromptu interrogation, and Wally made a mental note to plan ahead next time so he wouldn’t be caught as flat-footed as he had been today. Some things in life might’ve been unpredictable, but this event served him as a reminder that a good alibi, even for this new team of his, could might help him one day in the future. 

He ought to start planning escape routes, he noted. Everywhere, all the time.

Since that was the end of that, Wally stood up from his seat to leave the rest of the Rogues up to whatever they did when he wasn’t around. 

“…Excuse me,” Wally said flatly, as Piper followed Wally towards the door. He stopped to look at Piper behind him, and the other Rogue didn’t slow down, catching up in a few steps. 

“You’re excused,” Piper said. Wally made a face. Lame.

A little annoyed, he stepped forward, with Piper shadowing his footsteps and got a few steps further before spinning around.

“ _What_?” Wally demanded. Just beyond the bar’s patio, the sky was pouring. At some point while he’d still been in the bar, the light drizzle had grown heavier. The stagnant air was still warm against his skin, and the humidity wasn’t doing his mood much good. 

“Umbrella?” Piper offered, holding one up. He didn’t wait for a response, opening it and catching up to walk alongside Wally.

“Why are you following me?” he asked the Piper. He was tempted to sprint away, leaving the Rogue in the dust, but he had a feeling that was bad for team relations. Not that he cared, but he had  _some_  manners when dealing with the Rogues. Plus, it  _was_  dry under the umbrella, regardless of what direction the two of them were going to end up walking in.

“Curiosity,” Piper said. Wally rolled his eyes and nearly ran off right then and there, and he would have if it hadn’t been for the next comment. “You’re not going to find them without me, you know.”

“What?” Wally stepped in a puddle, water splashing against his shoes and threatening to soak into his socks if he stood in place too long. 

“The people peddling Velocity 9,” Piper said. “You’re not finding them without me. Or without any of us Rogues, actually, but let’s face it, I’m pretty sure no one else on the team is going to help you with this. Dealing with these kinds of people is my thing. I’ve got a good ear for tracking.”

“I’m not tracking anyone,” he insisted.

“Yes, you are,” he said with a smug grin that irritated Wally. 

“ _Why_  do you think that?” Wally asked.

“Because when you told me you weren’t going to track them down, your voice became slightly stressed, your breathing patterns increased, and your heart rate  _quadrupled_ ,” Piper said. “I was pretty impressed with that, actually. Most people’s heart rates just  _slightly_  elevate, and that’s it. I didn’t even have to  _try_ to figure out if you were lying. Speedster physiology and all.”

“So you…?”

“Cybernetic ear implants,” Piper said. 

“So you can hear my…” Wally gestured towards his lower abdomen, the area between his stomach and crotch. Piper made a slightly unamused face. 

“Most people don’t think about that,” he said. “I can filter most sounds out but… yes. Yes, I can.”

“Huh…” Wally said slowly, and after several moments he nodded. “Right, that’s cool. Well, see y—”

“ _Not_  so fast,” Piper said. “You see, I can tell when people are lying. And you were lying. You know something about the Velocity 9 drug. You didn’t at first, but you remembered something, didn’t you? Something to do with your family?”

“ _No_ ,” Wally said, trying to keep his voice as firm and even as possible, but it didn’t seem to do much against Piper’s apparent abilities as a human lie detector. The other redhead’s face split into a wide, snide grin. “…When my dad said I was connected, I don’t know what he meant—” 

“Yes, you do,” Piper interrupted, but Wally glared at him. 

“ _But_ ,” Wally said loudly, getting seriously irritated by the lie detection skills, “I know a few possibilities. I know people who, if I got hurt, would probably look into it. People who work with the police, and with the media. And  _they_  know a lot of people. But I think the reason he really told you that was because he didn’t want you guys going after me. I have the speedster formula right here in my head,” he said a little quietly, tapping his temple.

His eyes furrowed together, but it didn’t take long for Piper to piece it together. “…You made Velocity 9,” Piper said. 

“ _No_ ,” Wally said immediately. But he stopped, chewing his lips thoughtfully. “Not really. Maybe not. …I made prototypes of the speedster formula. I tested them and kept making more and more drafts until I got the right formula. He took one of my prototypes. But all of my formulas, they weren’t as simple slapping on a patch. They had to be applied and then treated with electrolysis in order to—…well, the point is, this patch is similar to what I made, but it’s still not the same.” 

“So it’s not yours.”

“I don’t know. They could’ve made alterations to my original work. I’ll need to test it,” Wally said. “See if there’s anything about the structure that I recognize.”

“In that lab you don’t have,” Piper said, and for a moment Wally wondered how he’d known that one, until he remembered mentioning it when Cold had confronted him.

“…Yeah,” Wally said flatly, unamused by Piper’s input. “Anyway, there’s one thing for sure: the timing  _is_  suspicious, and if it’s my drug, that means this is the first solid lead I’ve had on my dad.”

“You’re still going after him, then,” Piper said. 

“My mom’s in a wheelchair right now because of him. She’s out of work, too. The office she works at kind of got blown away,” Wally said. “You saw what he did to East Grey.”

He still couldn’t help the tinge of bitterness that crept up his throat and threatened to cut him off in mid-sentence. He hated the feeling, and he hated it even more with the realization that Hartley could apparently pick up on those details like shark to blood. 

To his credit, the Rogue didn’t show off his ability again. Piper looked at Wally cryptically through his green shades before shrugging his shoulders, the lines of his mouth pushed back like a flat-lipped smile. 

“Well, you’re not going to get to these people without me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Future chapters will be shorter, I think. I wanted to start posting shorter chapters to draw the story out a bit longer, but this was not a good start. Because the chapters for Part 1 were so large, it got posted too quickly and you guys caught up before I was even nearly done with Part 2, hence the two and a half month long wait.
> 
> Really sorry for the wait, guys. Also, some of you've may have missed it, so a late Merry Christmas to whoever did, but [I made a Christmas post with art for you guys](http://itsxandy.tumblr.com/post/38843557235/its-not-midnight-here-yet-so-i-technically-made). It's not really Christmas-y at all and doesn't really make up for the lack of updates, but it's all I've really got, so... Sorry!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wasn't really too happy with this chapter, sorry you guys.

“Don’t hit his face. You’ll hurt your own hand,” Piper said. “Even if your hands are as sturdy as the Flash’s, you don’t want to knock him out anyway. First two knuckles. Keep your wrist straight. Don’t want to break that either.”

Wally, whose fist stopped just a hair’s width in front of the man’s face, pulled his arm back, grim-faced and uncomfortable. He forced himself not to look in Piper’s general direction, because that could have given his position away in case reinforcements arrived. Holosonic sound fields—they were a pretty nifty device that meant Piper didn’t even have to be in the room to whisper into his ear. Wally still had to say, though, that the reception in the rain was terrible. “I thought you’re the one who does these kinds of errands because you were good with people,” he complained aloud, knowing Piper’s sensitive ears would pick up the sound. He drew his fist back again and hesitated. 

“Try the ribs,” Piper said, misinterpreting Wally’s uncertainty. “And I am good with people. But O’Hannegan isn’t going to talk about Velocity 9 willingly, and he knows my face, so I can’t force an answer out of him myself.”

Wally raised his fist again and—

“And no  _fancy tricks_. Remember, you’re associated with the Rogues, and the Rogues won’t want to be associated with this. We’re keeping word quiet on your superspeed, but if you show them what you’ve got now and one day they hear about your abilities in the future—”

“I got it, I got it,” Wally snapped. 

“Easy, tiger. Didn’t know you were so excited to beat someone up. By all means, go ahead.”

Wally wasn’t sure if O’Hannegan could understand the mouthed apology, but it was as close as he could get to one before he punched the man in the stomach.

“Where did you get the Velocity 9 drug?”

“I don’t know,” the man said snappishly, only a little winded by the punch. 

“ _Weak_ ,” Piper said, almost teasingly. “I want to  _hear_  you hit him.”

Wally glared at the O’Hannegan, who sneered up at him, equally unimpressed by Wally’s antics. Wally rolled his eyes and, after making sure O’Hannegan’s hands were securely fastened in the plasticuffs Piper had conveniently supplied him with earlier, he walked off, inspecting the drug dealer’s personal makeshift lab. 

“Morphine diacetate,” Wally said. It was a crude lab, and he was only able to identify the contents because of what Piper told him about the drugs he sold. “You sell that, right? I see you’re a bit of a chemist. Trying to see if you can make some yourself? I guess it’d be useful to be able to make it on your own, but really, you should start labeling your flasks. You could get your chemicals mixed up.”

He uncorked one of them and sniffed a small waft of it. Odorless. Nope.

“What are you playing at, Kid?” Piper asked him. 

Wally replaced the first flask and opened a flask. A little bitter to his nose, which stung a little at the scent. Nope.

O’Hannegan shifted, watching Wally a little anxiously, not completely sure what was going on but certain he wasn’t going to enjoy the outcome. 

The fifth chemical he tried, contained in a small flask, smelled like almonds. Hydrocyanic acid. 

“Have you actually studied chemistry or were you just stumbling around trying to figure out how this worked?” Wally asked curiously, taking the flask back with him to O’Hannegan, “Some people say hydrogen cyanide was the precursor to the amino and nucleic acids in our body. Basically, it might’ve played a part in the origin of life. Which is ironic, because cyanide poisoning will also kill you. It’s technically a chemical weapon. Now, I don’t know what concentration you have here, but I think even this little will do the job nicely. You’ll start having difficulty breathing, first because your nose and mouth will fill with foam, and then just because your throat will start to constrict. You’ll begin to convulse, seizures hard enough to snap your own back. If you’re lucky, your heart will go into cardiac arrest quickly, and you’ll die soon after. If not, you could end up putting up with the pain for a while.”

He heard a low, appreciative whistle in his ear. 

“But if you kill me, you won’t get your information,” O’Hannegan said, looking confused by Wally’s approach but still very definitely concerned by the narrated death.

“I won’t,” Wally said. “I’m  _really_  uncomfortable with torturing people for information. I mean, you’re not giving me anything anyway. And I don’t feel like just letting you go.” He leaned closer, inches away from the drug dealer’s ear. “ _And you laughed at me_.”

* * *

Velocity 9 was a title, not a drug. To get the Velocity name, it had to be a superspeed serum better than the previous. “V9” was not, in fact, V9. It hadn’t passed muster just yet, and was going through its trial run on the streets. Wally wasn’t the only person asking about the drug. There was a guy named Arsenal who used to buy his “skag” and was apparently involved in the operation and was coming back soon to check up on how the merchandise and how sales were panning out and Wally wasn’t really going to put that stuff down his throat right?

The honest truth was, no, Wally would not, but the less O’Hannegan understood his intentions, the better information he’d get, at least.

All this—the threats, the drugs, the criminals—left a bad taste in Wally’s mouth, but all in all, he had made progress. At least he’d found a new lead, Wally told himself. 

“Color me impressed,” Piper said. “I didn’t think you’d actually get anything out of him.”

“If you didn’t think I could do it, why’d you let me try?” Wally muttered, glancing around to make sure no one was around to see him talking to himself, despite the fact that he knew no one was there and he was just being paranoid.

“You’ve got to grow up some time, Kid. Really, did you think I couldn’t have managed without you?”

“I just didn’t think you’d deliberately waste  _my_  time,” Wally said, letting out an annoyed huff of air. His jaw ached from his clenched teeth, and Piper’s  _teasing_ was not helping.

“I can hear your teeth grinding from all the way over here,” Piper pointed out, a fact that Wally completely ignored. 

“You’re an asshole.”

“I’m  _helping_  you,” Piper said. “Teach a man to fish, right? You needed to find out more about V9. I showed you how.”

“You showed me how to punch someone,” Wally said. 

“You need some practice with that too,” he said. “Somehow, I get the feeling that your heart really wasn’t into the punch.”

“Because it wasn’t. I can run circles around everyone. I don’t  _need_  to learn any of this—”

“Yes. You do,” Piper said. “You’re not going to run away from your problems forever. You didn’t, that night when you came to  _our_  bar and picked a fight.”

“That was different. I was—”

“Upset? Angry? Whatever you were, your first impulse was to run to the Rogues’ home turf in a suicide attack.”

“ _Suicide_? That wasn’t suicide.”

“It practically is, when you pick a fight with convicts and don’t even know how to throw a punch,” Piper said. “It is when you’re about to walk off by yourself to look for drug dealers without knowing what you’re even doing. I don’t think you even understand—”

Piper’s voice cut off. 

“…Understand what?” Wally asked. When he received no response, he stepped outside, ignoring the rain and looking up at the rooftops of a nearby building in concern. He couldn’t see Piper’s red hair peeking over the edge of the roof anymore. 

“…Piper?” he called quietly under his breath, only to receive no answer to his call. 

He wiped an arm against his brow, wiping the rain from his eyes, and he glanced around. It was only through sheer luck that he heard the feet pounding against the ground over the rain and turned around to meet a blow just in time.

Aside from the incident with the Rogues, Wally had never been in a fight before, but he did know the basics: don’t let the other guy punch you. But when he raised his arm to block the fist that was startlingly close to his face, the impact shook down his arm and it was only Wally’s own misstep that kept him from being flung against the wall. 

Instead, he stumbled backward under the force of the blow, water splashing on the ground around him, and he found himself staring up at a dark-skinned man, wearing a jacket with the hood up, a pair of sunglasses, and a grim frown on his face. The rain hadn’t lightened up at all since he left the Rogues’ bar, and Wally would have wondered just how well the man could see through the sunglasses, covered in water droplets, but he was preoccupied with the sheer difference in their size and build and the gripping urge to run away, to put some distance between them. 

He hadn’t even felt this way when he faced the Rogues. There was something actually dangerous about this man. The cold look, the firm but not rigid posture, the fluid movement, a sign of a level head and experience that made Wally feel small and inept. 

So he scrambled backwards, an awkward crabwalk, managing to put a bit of distance between him and the other man, just barely giving him enough time to get back up on his own feet. The man was  _fast_. For every frantic step Wally took backward, he took one forward to meet his retreat. 

No. 

His gait was longer, and Wally was just panicking. 

Just panicking. But there was obviously something superhuman about this man, whose stray punch felt like it would have been strong enough to break something if he’d been a little less lucky. 

His first impulse was to run. Stumbling around backwards, he obviously wasn’t going to get away from this guy, but if he turned tail and ran for it… There was no  _way_  he’d be able to keep up with Wally in a proper chase. He glanced to the side, a bit of open space that, while technically in range of the man’s arms, had enough wiggle room for Wally to make his escape.

But Piper. 

To his attacker’s credit, he  _did_  correctly read Wally’s original intentions. When Wally moved, the man had lunged to Wally’s right to cut him off, but Wally instead darted to the left, enough speed to run up the wall in a wide, curved arc. He only managed to run parallel to the ground for a few short moments before his foot touched the concrete again, but Wally didn’t stop there, running across the street lanes and made a beeline toward the building that had been across from him. 

His foot hit the concrete, and he began running up the wall, a feat he could normally accomplish easily at any other time than now. He’d never done much running in the rain before. Only halfway up the building, he felt himself quickly losing momentum, his feet beginning to slip against the rain-slicked bricks, and Wally frantically leaned forward, leaned up, and slammed hands up against the edge of the building.

The tips of his fingers would bruise, but he made it to the top of the building without slipping, and Wally was willing to call that an accomplishment. Upper-body and arm strength had never really been his thing, and Wally’s arms trembled as he dragged himself up, sparing only a single glance over his shoulder as he pulled himself up over the edge of the rooftop. Below, the dark-skinned man stalked towards the corner of the building, as if to pace around the building, waiting for whenever Wally would have to leave. 

Wally ignored it, forcing the panicked feeling in his gut down, because Piper was face down and not moving. Wally ran to his side, turning him over and felt for a pulse. He couldn’t feel one past the unreliable throbbing in his finger, but he did see Piper’s chest slowly rising and falling. He was just unconscious. 

And the blunt arrow beside Piper explained it all. Wally made a brief attempt to feel around for a bump under all of the Piper’s hair, tangled and disheveled from the rain, the umbrella fallen to the side. Wally didn’t bother taking back the umbrella; there wasn’t much time for something so trivial when there was a long-ranged enemy nearby, and instead he leaned over Piper’s and hefted his body over his shoulders. 

Wally staggered a little over the larger Rogue’s weight and spared a brief moment to get used to the weight before starting off at a run towards the edge of the building. With enough speed, he’d probably be able to make it across, avoiding the dark man on the street entirely and—

He didn’t make it across. 

Wally hit the ground with a jarring thud, and Piper landed on top of him, knocking the breath out of his chest, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure if he had blacked out or not. There was a massive goo coating his entire body and the entire area surrounding them; it had probably slightly broken their fall. It took Wally a moment to regain his coordination enough to push Piper off of him, and the unconscious man rolled off to the side.

It took a few moments longer to recover the rest of his wits. Dazed, Wally clenched his eyes shut and pressed his palms against his temple, attempting to dispel his headache through sheer force. The world spun dizzily around him, spilling rain down his face. It was a welcome sensation compared to the throbbing pain. 

Even in the rain, he should have been able to make the jump. He’d felt it in his body. But, instead, he ended up short of the jump and fell three stories, and Wally couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. Until he noticed the ache in his ribs, an ache separate from the rest of his soon-to-be blossoming bruises. He felt around slowly, sinking a hand through the viscous goo until he felt a thin, narrow shaft of the arrow that had knocked him off-course. Of course. Jumping had been a stupid idea, when he knew there was some sort of sharpshooting archer in the area taking potshots at him. He couldn’t dodge in midair.

Wally sat up as quickly as he could. Or, at least, he tried to, but it was getting hard to move and instead, he ended up flat on his back again, dragged back down the the elasticity of the material. He was suddenly aware that the goo around him was still moving. It was growing, a foam of some sort, and it was beginning to creep over the rest of his body. 

Frantic, Wally brought his free hand up to his face to try and wipe away the foam, all too aware of the fact that it wasn’t just expanding. It had started off with the consistency of glue and was rapidly beginning to harden around him, like a cast that tasted like rubber and cardboard. 

Oh. Polyurethane foam. Reacted with the water. It’s consistency had become too sticky, trapping him like a fly in a glue trap, and then slowly beginning to solidify around his body, and he wondered if this was what it was like to be buried alive. 

Buried alive. 

It took a moment for the thought to sink in. Wally rolled over on his side, trying to create enough leverage with the ground to push himself up, but he could barely move. 

“Piper. Wake up.”

The other Rogue was still unconscious but otherwise free. 

“Piper. Get up. Help me.  _Wake up_.”

Piper didn’t move a muscle, didn’t even twitch, and Wally was struck by the thought of  _what if he didn’t wake up_? Maybe he was just unconscious, maybe he hit his head when he hit the ground. And Wally would be stuck here, he’d die here, they could  _both_  die here. Piper with his head cracked open on the concrete, and Wally would suffocate in goo used to fill in holes in the floor. Not exactly the way he wanted to go.

“ _Piper, wake up!_ ”

And with that last shout, Wally still didn’t get a response. He covered his free hand over his nose and mouth. It’d limit his air, but it seemed better than the alternative of having the foam fill in his nasal cavities and throat and  _expand_. He closed his eyes at it spread over his face and tried not to panic because if he did now, he’d—

He’d  _what_?

What was there, other than suffocation?

Wally pinched his nose shut, his palm shielding the rest of his open mouth from being filled with the foam. Bits of the foam leaked through his fingers, some of it getting into his mouth, nasty and porous, tasting like cardboard and filling up most of his small breathing space. How long could he keep breathing through the tiny holes in the substance? Not long enough, and not long at all.

Not enough oxygen. He could already feel the low burn in his lungs as too much carbon dioxide filled the system, and his heart was hammering at triple speed. Wally’s chest was heaving up and down as he gasped for air, but little he could get just wasn’t enough, and panicking was making things worse, but he couldn’t help it.

The burning feeling centered around his lungs and spiraled up his ribcage, and there was a soreness behind his eyes, a sudden feeling of exhaustion, but his eyes were already clenched shut and there was little else he could do to relieve the ache and pressure.

He couldn’t breathe. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felt a little better about this chapter, but I also felt it lacked the usual… something. Witticisms, maybe. Or clarity.

His holosonic technology really needed a bit of work. Convenient for communication, but apparently blocked his field of vision. The side of Hartley’s face throbbed where the arrow projectile had struck him. 

He groaned out loud, the sound of it carried into the sky where there was no one to hear. The rain was pouring down on his forehead, though the lower half of his face remained dry under his face mask. He didn’t open his eyes, lying flat on his back and listening for people. 

He counted one person immediately, counting quietly under his breath. 

Footsteps. Someone was running here.

“What happened?”

The counting stopped for a moment as the person answered. “I don’t know. The fall shouldn’t have killed him.”

Hartley risked cracking open an eyelid, glancing up in the direction of the voices to see two people kneeling on the ground a few feet away from him with an unmoving body between them. He recognized the clothes.

Oh god.

Hartley closed his eyes again, listening for a heartbeat. All he could hear was something like a heavy buzz, picking up nothing but the steady drumming rain.

Nothing.

He got the Kid killed. He got  _a_  kid killed. God. 

“I think he used the drug,” the first man said, switching back to pumping the Kid’s chest. “The way he jumped off the roof, most people can’t cover the distance he did. Almost did.”

“Considering the mortality rate of the drug, it’s a possibility,” the second person said. “Move aside.”

“What are you doing?” 

“CPR alone is not enough to restart the heart. If we’re lucky, an adequate electric shock can restart it.”

“Oh  _hell_  no.”

Piper’s eyes shot open and he looked up to see the Kid scrambling back up to his feet, looking disheveled, but  _alive_. Despite everything, despite  _not having a heartbeat_ , he was alive. 

The dark-skinned man reacted immediately, grabbing the Kid by the front of his throat. The Kid reacted by grabbing the  _other_  other red-haired man by the wrist. 

The smell of sparks and ozone filled the air, and both redheads were floored, twitching on the concrete as electricity coursed their system. The dark-skinned man immediately stopped. 

“ _Arsenal,_ ” he said.

So this person  _was_  Arsenal. O’Hannegan hadn’t mentioned anything about a partner, and Hartley had a feeling Arsenal was just another of a number of aliases as well. The name had rolled awkwardly, unnaturally off his tongue.

The Kid recovered and moved, faster than Piper realized was even possible for him. Piper could hear his heart now, pounding intermittently, and it took him a moment to realize why he couldn’t hear it before, beating so quickly it could’ve been mistaken for the skittering sound of the rain. It reminded Hartley of static. 

He darted and circled around Arsenal, who hadn’t yet recovered from the shock. The man hung, half-limp with the Kid holding him up so the larger man was leaning backward against his chest. 

“Don’t come any closer,” he said, staring at the black man unblinkingly over Arsenal’s shoulder. 

The man held up his hands peaceably, but he didn’t relax at all at the sight. It made sense. He had just been shocked by the man’s touch alone, and while the Kid seemed fine, there was a definite tremor to his fingers and an unsteady feeling in his posture. 

“Who are you?” the man asked. 

“I… my name… the Kid,” he stammered out shakily, and Hartley hid a wince at the rookie mistake. There was no reason to identify himself, no leverage that the man had to make the thief give up his name. Hartley could only hope word of the Kid’s presence wouldn’t get out too far. There was still a chance the news wouldn’t spread. A slim chance. He knew their name. It was just a matter of finding out more about them and discrediting them. 

At least, Hartley consoled himself, the man seemed skeptical about the name he was given. An alias he definitely hadn’t heard of. Hartley knew he hadn’t heard of the Kid before. Aside from one or two tongue-waggling fences here and there, he had managed to keep word quiet about the Kid. The speedster on their team would remain an unknown. 

“Kid,” the man said, looking none too convinced that the name he got was real. “He saved your life.”

“I was awake almost the entire time! Plus,  _he_  made me fall! Three stories! Then he almost drowned me in viscous polyurethane foam and nearly broke my ribs!” the Kid said. “I don’t see any reason why I should care.”

“I’m a good kisser?” Arsenal suggested, fumbling hands grabbing the Kid’s wrist, which was hooked over his shoulder and in front of his throat in a weak headlock. Later, Hartley noted, he was going to have to correct that. The Kid’s frame was too slight compared to these men, and unless he happened to have a good amount of strength to go with that superspeed, that was a poor position to be in.

“Uh.” 

Hartley couldn’t see if the Kid was blushing or anything, and even if he did have a good view of his face, he didn’t need it. His heart rate, which had just begun to slow down in semblance of that of a normal human’s, began to pound in his chest again. 

While the Kid’s brain was still shorted out by the shock, the unexpected comment, and his own inexperience, Arsenal used his grip on the newest Rogue’s arm and flipped him over, tossing the Kid over his shoulder to his partner. 

Hartley saw the crackle of electricity forming in the partner’s hands and decided now was the best time to act, turning the knob on his lower facemask and twisting it all the way up. 

And that was how his low hiss became a reverberating, bone-shaking screech that would’ve knocked all three of them off their feet if it hadn’t been for the fact that the Kid had already been airborne. 

Disoriented by the sudden blast of sound, Hartley ran forward, grabbing the Kid where he had fallen on top of the partner and knocked him down, and ran away, dragging the half-dazed speedster after him.

“ _What did you do?_ ” the Kid shouted at the top of his lungs, unnecessarily loud even without Hartley’s advanced hearing. “ _I can’t hear anything!_ ”

“How awful,” Hartley gritted through his teeth, sparing only a moment to look over his shoulder at the Kid, and then further back to see if they were being pursued. He didn’t see anyone. He couldn’t hear anyone, either, but the rain didn’t help and he didn’t have the luxury of stopping everything so he could readjust the settings of his hearing aids. After a few more steps, the Kid seemed to have recovered from the shock, and suddenly rushed forward, ramming into Hartley from behind and picking him up in one scoop. 

Hartley made an undignified sound as the Kid ran with him in his arms and the world dissolved into a mess of colors.

No, not a complete mess. Unable to hear beyond the sound of air rushing past his ear, Hartley forced his eyes open, squinting as small bursts of wind made their way behind his sunglasses, but he could barely make out distinct shapes. On top of that, the world had taken on a blue tinge. Hypnotized by the colors and the blurred shapes, Hartley could almost see the appeal in superspeed. 

Hartley was born deaf. He knew what it was like, living in an absence of sound, and this was nothing like it. It was more like riding a motorcycle without a helmet, with the wind whipping around through his hair and clothes. The world still existed, but it was reduced to distant images and white noise. It was almost peaceful.

After a few more moments in the Kid’s arms, eyes squeezed shut and sitting in bridal position, Hartley had had enough of it. He raised an arm to tape the other Rogue on the shoulder, signaling him to stop.

After the Kid slowed down, he nearly dropped Hartley. Maybe he was wrong in assuming the Kid had shaken off the effects of the electric shock; he still shifted restlessly from foot to foot, constantly shooting glances around them, sometimes leaning over, hands on his knees as if he were about to fall over, and other times he stood straight, as rigid as a board. 

“Are you okay?” Hartley asked him. He got a confused look in return.

“ _What_?” he said loudly, motioning towards his ear. “I can’t hear you!”

Hartley pulled down his face mask, pointing at his mouth for the Kid to read his lips. “ _Are you okay?_ ”

“Heck no, I’m not okay!” the Kid shouted. “My ears are still ringing!”

“Oh relax, it’ll stop in a bit,” Hartley said, peeking around the corner and making sure no one had seen them run between the buildings. The Kid looked at him, a little confused by the long string of words, but shook his head, finally looking as if his nerves were starting to settle down. 

He leaned against the wall, looking down at his clothes. Unlike Hartley’s own clothes, specially made by the Rogues’ personal tailor, the Kid’s once-new looking clothes were wrinkled and worn out from the running. He picked at a small tear at his knees. “Never ran that fast before,” he admitted, his voice calmer and quieter than it had been before. “I even hit the blueshift.” 

“The what?” Hartley asked. The Kid looked up at him, realizing the question he had asked. 

“You run so fast, it starts affecting the wavelengths of the light you see. Things appear blue,” the Kid said distractedly, digging his pinky finger into his ear.

“I never heard anything about it.”

“I never did it before,” he shrugged casually, though he looked perplexed by the fact that he did. “Never considered the effects of…” His voice trailed off as he thought, and after a few beats of silence, the Kid spoke up again, a new thought forming in his mind. “What was that thing? That thing that busted my ears?”

“The holosonic device,” Hartley said, pointing at the facemask that now hung around his neck. “Technically, it’s like an LRAD. Just a bit more… compact.”

“…So you had a loudspeaker installed on your face.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that,” Hartley said defensively. “It can also focus sound like a laser, so that only people at a certain point in space can hear what I say. And unlike a certain someone, I think it did a pretty good job taking down Arsenal and his friend.”

“Ah, yes, that,” the Kid said. “You know, you could’ve helped out  _before_  they threw me in the air and shocked me.”

“And  _you_  could’ve just run for it and left me behind,” he replied. The Kid looked surprised by the revelation. It hadn’t occurred to him to run. It was worrying, that the Kid wasn’t thinking of himself. True, it was good to have the speedster for backup, but doing so left the Kid exposed. “Besides,” Hartley added, hiding his concerns, “you thought Arsenal was a good kisser. I wasn’t sure if I ought to interrupt.”

“What?” he sputtered. “No! Yes! You should’ve interrupted! That wasn’t a kiss, that was CPR, and he was  _cracking my ribs_.”

“The night you picked a fight with us, you were angry and upset and out of control. I listened to your heartbeat,” Hartley said. “Your heart was racing, but it was nowhere near as fast as when you were literally face-to-face with Arsenal. Nowhere near as fast as now, too, actually.”

“Shut up,” the Kid muttered, looking embarrassed. 

“It kind of really is. Was he really a good kisser? Did you use tongue?” Hartley asked, feeling maybe a little too pleased by the Kid’s mortification over the whole thing. “I saw tongue, I totally saw tongue.”

“It’s not  _that_  funny.”

“Oh man, the guys can’t ever make fun of me for Zoom again. You totally had your tongue in his mouth.”

“Piper. Shut. Up.”

There was little inflection to his words, and the tone was uncharacteristically flat for the Kid, but Hartley backed off under the Kid’s gaze. He was angry, and while Hartley didn’t care much about the Kid’s delicate sensitivities, he wasn’t going to push the envelope if it meant getting into some kind of fist fight. Hartley wasn’t exactly the hands-on sort compared to the rest of the Rogues anyway, and even if he were, picking a fight with the Kid seemed like a poor way to apologize for baiting him into a trap. 

Not that he had known it was a trap, but it had seemed like a good idea to use someone less known for running with the Rogues for a job like this. The fact that the Kid also had an interest in V9 had been icing on the cake; it had saved Hartley from the hassle of convincing the Kid to do his dirty work. 

“Why didn’t you run?” Harley asked.

“You weren’t moving,” the Kid said bluntly, confirming Hartley’s previous thoughts. It had to occur to him that he could’ve just run. “Wasn’t leaving without you.”

“Aw, that’s sweet,” he grinned teasingly, and the Kid rolled his eyes.

“Shut up,” he muttered, though unlike earlier, there was little venom to his voice. He lacked that dangerous undertone, and while the Kid couldn’t be considered too “playful” with the Rogues, the casual tone was back. 

“Why do you do this?” Hartley asked. The Kid stared at him, face blank. “Why do you… do this? I mean, I don’t know how to put it in simpler terms. 

The Kid hesitated before shrugging, avoiding Hartley’s eyes. “Why not?” he asked. It wasn’t the typical Rogue response. With Captain Cold and the rest of the Rogues, the only thing they usually cared for was the next big score. It was important enough to them that they would put up a unified front against the Flash. Without that one goal, none of the Rogues would ever be able to put up with each other and work as a team.

For Hartley, it had never been about the money. No matter how versatile his skills were, he had never really felt like one of them. Never fit in. Not really. It was one of the few characteristics the Rogues all shared that made them a functioning team, and he never had it.

Neither did the Kid. 

Hartley wondered if this was how the Trickster felt when he left the team and Piper chose not to go with him. 

When Hartley didn’t respond, the Kid tilted his head slightly to the side, looking puzzled by the sudden reticence. “Why’d you ask?” 

“No reason,” Hartley said. 

Let the kid learn. Let him think he had a team.

Maybe he’d have better luck than Piper.


	4. Chapter 4

“There’s just no way to catch up,” Hunter gritted his teeth in frustration. His swinging fist struck empty air as Garth stumbled out of the way, and he resisted the urge to immediately follow up on the strike. Baby steps, he reminded himself. “Every time, we’re too late.”

Garth circled slightly, making a wide arc, just out of Hunter’s reach. Points off for dawdling.

“Is the Kid too fast for you?” he asked, finally reaching out to deliver a backhanded blow that Hunter easily blocked with a raised arm. Black Canary stressed the importance of not relying completely on their powers in a fight, but it was hard, sometimes to ignore how  _slow_  other people were sometimes.

“Watch it!” Robin warned loudly from the sidelines.

“Apologies—” Garth said immediately, only for Hunter to slide to a hand and knee and sweep Garth’s legs out from under him. The newest member of the team went down instantly, knocked onto the flat of his back. Garth was the Atlantean queen’s most skilled graduate from her school of mystical arts, but while Garth was unrivaled in the arts, Kaldur was both skilled in sorcery and far better in combat, and Hunter ached a little at the memory.

“He was talking about your footing,” Hunter said calmly, getting back up to his feet. He brushed his hands together and then reaching out a hand to help Garth back up to his feet. “…But don’t compare me to the Kid again.”

“I will take note of that,” Garth said, rubbing the soreness out of his lower back. It hadn’t been a graceful fall, but Hunter was certain he’d improve his landing, given time.

“While you’re taking notes: always know where your feet are. Above the sea, you have to worry about stumbling over your own feet. You need to stay balanced, and it’ll help you exert more control over your space.”

“My space?” Garth asked.

“Your space,” Robin repeated, interjecting the conversation. He lightly hopped over to the two of them, deftly walking on the balls of his feet with one foot in front of him and the other behind. “Forward, back, and side. You can control the distance you strike at, and angle you strike from—some of the most important things in a fight.”

“Pretty much,” Hunter agreed. He raised his arm, the one that he had used earlier to block Garth’s wild blow. It ached, but only due to the benefit of Garth’s Atlantean physiology, rather than his martial skill. “Bad footwork, weaker punch. You should be able to  _break_  me.”

“My strengths lie in my sorcery—”

“Which is most effective when you have large amounts of water,” Hunter said. “But sooner or later, we’re going to be taking you on missions where supplying you with sprinkler systems or a beach is going to be a lot more difficult.”

“Artemis’s choice of weapon is also long-distance. Perhaps she may—”

“ _No_!” Robin and Hunter said simultaneously, with slightly alarmed expressions on their faces.

“That would be the last bad choice you’d ever make,” Robin explained, giving Garth a pat on the shoulder at seeing the confused expression on his face.

“You are not ready for Artemis. You may  _never_  be ready for Artemis,” Hunter said.

Garth gave them a curious look. “She is too strong?” he asked.

“She had a different upbringing,” Robin explained. “Trains with an iron fist.”

Garth gave him an Atlantean salute, thanking Hunter for his lesson, a gesture that Hunter returned with a little less elegance. The lighter-skinned Atlantean looked a little put out by his loss, but Hunter had to admit that this was a vast improvement from those days, just months ago, when Garth was stumbling around the mountain, fresh out of the water and constantly unsure of his footing. Hunter hadn’t been impressed. He’d even been a bit dismayed and furious at Kaldur’s replacement. But Garth had exceeded expectations, and Hunter could appreciate hard work, at the very least.

“What do you say?” Robin asked, grinning at Hunter. “It’s been a while since  _we_  sparred. You look like you could blow off some steam.”

Hunter looked Robin up and down. It was true. Lately, even since Robin had returned to the team to take over as leader, he’d been too busy working alongside Batman, investigating which missions to send the team on. There was little time to engage in casual sparring with the rest of the team; even when there was, Robin almost felt hesitant to challenge the team to a spar. Hunter knew he was putting in an effort though.

It was just strange. The last time they had fought, the kid was barely even level with his shoulders. Now Robin was standing nearly eye-to-eye with him.

“I don’t see why not. Maybe this time you’ll actually beat me,” Hunter said. Playful jest, of course. Even when he was smaller, Robin usually came out on top in a fight, sometimes even when he used his powers. Sparring with Robin or Superboy, as valuable an experience as it was, generally left Hunter and his ego stomped into the ground, enhanced reflexes be damned. His ability to manipulate time might allow him to keep up with the Flash, but his abilities didn’t come with the momentum that would allow him to compete with Superboy in strength or Robin’s impossible techniques that made him so inhumanly—or metahumanly—hard to spar against.

“I was always able to kick your butt,” Robin grinned.

“You couldn’t even reach my butt,” he retorted, but before they could begin, Mount Justice’s intercom system went off alerting them that the team was meeting in the debriefing room.

All three teammates exchanged glances.

“Did you know anything about a assignment?” Hunter asked, casting a sideglance at Robin.

“Maybe it’s a last minute thing?” Robin shrugged, shaking his head. “He hasn’t been giving me a heads up about any of the upcoming missions lately.”

In other words, they had another tiff. Hunter cast his younger teammate a sympathetic look.

They headed towards the briefing room to find several of the other members of the team already there. Batman, oddly enough, was standing off to the side. Instead, Roy and Kaldur were standing before them, front and in the center.

Hunter nearly stopped dead in his tracks, only for Robin to grab him by the wrist and yank him forward, half-jogging to greet their visitors. Hunter reluctantly went along after him, refusing to be dragged around like an oversized doll.

“Roy,” Hunter said, as close as he was going to get to a friendly greeting.

“Hunter,” the redhaired archer replied testily. His tone was nowhere near as cool and distant as Hunter’s was, but there was a certain dismissive sound to it.

“Kaldur!” Robin said, bounding over to shake Kaldur’s hand and pull him into a half-hug. It reminded Hunter of the fact that it had been more than just a few months since he’d last seen Kaldur and Roy. Robin had rejoined the team just after Kaldur had left it. In fact, Hunter was pretty sure that Robin had rejoined the team  _because_  Kaldur had left it. It was something they never really brought up. Hunter never begrudged the youngest member for leaving, because Batman’s orders overrode every other, and he was just glad Robin had come back when they’d needed him.

“What brings you here?” Garth asked, a wide smile as he walked up to Kaldur.

“Robin. Garth,” Kaldur said. “Roy and I came to Batman to speak of certain delicate matters, and he suggested taking our mission to you.”

“So you need our help?” Hunter asked.

“ _No_ ,” Roy said immediately, at the same time Kaldur nodded and said yes. Kaldur sent his partner an even and neutral look, and Roy fell silent at the muted reprimand. Kaldur turned over his shoulder to look back at Batman, his eyebrows slightly raised in question.

Then, behind him and Roy, a large digital display flickered into life and hovered behind them, showcasing a molecular model of some sort at a magnified view. Jay or Barry would’ve probably known what it was—both the former and current Flashes were experts on the subject of chemistry—but to Hunter, it just looked like a mess of bubbles.

“This,” Batman spoke up, referring to the molecule on display, “is a dangerous derivative of a neoamphetamine of unknown origin.” Hunter wasn’t sure how Batman knew it was the derivative of a certain type of drug if he didn’t even know what the original was, but he didn’t question the research. The display changed, showing a series of square white patches. “It’s rumored to be a candidate for the newest generation of Velocity. According to our sources, the drug has just left its experimental stage, and a first batch is going to be released onto the streets.”

“It’s like beta testing. This is a test run to see if it goes well. If it does, it’ll be labeled as the ninth generation of Velocity,” Roy said. “Velocity 9. Whoever’s running the operation, they’re doing it  _quietly_. The only advantage this gives us is that the drug dealers who’ve been given the samples know just as little about who’s in on the op. I’ve been under cover gathering information, posing as part of the organization.”

Roy apparently hadn’t learned his lesson, considering the consequences of what happened the last time he went undercover in a drug organization, but Hunter didn’t comment on it. He didn’t want to lose face around his team. He would like for some people to consider him a professional.

“What’s the point of calling it Velocity 9?” Conner asked. “It’s just a name, isn’t it?”

“Marketability,” Robin answered for him. “There’ve been knock offs of the speedster formula since Windrunner’s debut  _way_  long ago, but only a few have had guaranteed success, quality, and stock. Velocity is basically like a brand name for speedster formulas.”

“ _Speedster_  formulas?” Raquel repeated, looking surprised by the suggestion. It probably hadn’t occurred to her how the Flashes had gotten their powers.

“Unofficial title for any kind of chemical for superspeed. They’re tricky. Even if the drugs can successfully increase a person’s speed, there are always complications. Their lungs might not be able to keep up with the amount of oxygen intake they need, their heart may fail them, they may have the speed of a speedster but the reaction time of a normal human…” Hunter recited, recalling Jay and Barry’s old stories about past villains. He didn’t know much about science, but he could remember a good anecdote and remembered Jay telling him about rumors of experiments conducted in Russia and Germany back in his day. “But every once in a while, someone gets it right.”

“Like the Flashes?” Raquel asked with a grin.

“Like the Flashes,” Hunter agreed with a bit of pride.

“And Baron Blitzkrieg. Eobard Thawne. Albrecht Krieger,” Batman said, listing off criminals who had successfully gained superspeed, one way or the other. Hunter bit his tongue and chewed on it, his mood soured. “And, most recently, ‘the Kid’, a thief based in Central City, Missouri, who is the focus of your next mission.”

The screen changed, from a molecule to a freeze frame of one of the rare video footages that featured the Kid, who was nothing more than a blur in the lens of a less than state-of-the-art security feed.

“You think this guy has something to do with this drug?” Hunter asked.

“The timing of his appearance is suspicious,” Batman answered.

“The thief known as the Kid also seems to have some sort of relation or interest in the drug. Roy’s contact, Robert O’Hannegan, was in possession of the drugs when, today, the Kid came by.”

The freeze frame began to move in slow motion, its original video unable to catch the details of the Kid’s face, but it was at least able to provide them with some more insight as to what they were facing. The Kid slowly blurred across the screen, a timer in the corner and a vector drawn as he moved combining to measure the rate at which he ran. Robin shifted uncomfortably beside Hunter as they watched the Kid smash a jewelry case and grab its contents.

“His speed has yet to be officially recorded. According to calculations based on this video footage, estimations say that once he gains momentum, the Kid is capable of running at speeds of one hundred meters per second. Seeing as we’ve only caught videos of him slowing down in order to steal goods, it’s safe to say that this is a low estimate. It’s possible to assume that, unlike most other copycat speedsters faced in the past, his running speed is comparable to the Flash’s.”

“Maybe he’s faster than you,” Robin said teasingly. Hunter scowled at him but refused to rise to the bait in front of Batman. Besides, he was almost as fast as Barry. In fact, between the two of them, it was hard to say who was faster; Barry had to worry about collateral damage whenever he broke the speed of sound, and Hunter had to worry about keeping his head on straight whenever he strained his powers too long or hard. Either way, if the Kid was just  _comparable_  to the Flash, there was no way he’d be  _faster_  than Zoom.

Probably.

Batman ignored the comment diplomatically, continuing on to the next image. The screen switched to a number of mathematical formulas that were completely foreign to Hunter, though Robin whistled appreciatively at the data. Mathematics were Robin’s strong suit, not Hunter’s.

“I’ve amassed data from the time of the Kid’s first appearances, his approximate speed, and the estimated rate at which one’s speed increases with the use of the drug, and I’ve used the results to put together a rough timeline as to how long the Kid must’ve been taking the drug,” Batman said. “Assuming that his powers actually came from this drug, I’ve gauged the time of his first ‘hit’ to have been roughly four to six years ago.”

“According to our investigation,” Kaldur said, “the Kid received his treatments  _long_  before V9 was ever released into the streets.”

“So if the Kid got his powers long before the drug was ever released, maybe he’s not actually involved with Velocity 9,” Robin suggested.

“Or he could have been the prototype,” Roy said. “The first person who tested it.”

“But we don’t know that,” Robin protested, but under Batman’s gaze, he looked away.

“We don’t know a lot of things about the Kid,” Batman said. “For now, we’ll assume that the Kid was the very first person ever exposed to this drug, which would implicate a link between the distributor of this drug, if not the creators of the drug themselves.”

The display went dark.

“We need to find out everything this thief knows and doesn’t know,” he finished, his stern look dissipating into a neutral expression as he addressed the team as a whole. “Your current assignment is to track down the Kid and take him for League questioning.”

* * *

The fact that Wally still had to take some lower level chemistry courses had been annoying, but ended up working well in the long-run. He took a respectable number of classes and didn’t need to spend too much time prepping for tests. Science had always been intuitive to him; he’d known most of this material since he was ten.

One of the drawbacks, however, was the fact that the labs just weren’t adequate. He had been optimistic to assume that he could make do with in a general chemistry laboratory. Beyond basic instruments like glass beakers and vials and Bunsen burners, there wasn’t much he could work with. Wally opened his notebook, writing notes to organize his thoughts and try to calculate how his margin of error might be affected if he tried to cheat and spin the flask by hand using superspeed. The lab didn’t even have a rotary evaporator.

“What are you doing?” someone asked.

“Nothing,” Wally said shortly, his brow furrowing. He glared down at his absentminded doodles for a homemade evaporator and tore out the entire page. It was an accident waiting to happen.

“Well, ‘nothing’  _looks_  like you’re conducting an independent experiment in my lab.”

Wally froze and slowly sat up, straightening his back and staring straight ahead of him for a moment before sharply turning his head to his right, where his lab’s chemistry TA was looking at Wally’s setup.

“Uh…”

“What are you doing? Why aren’t you following the lab manual?” he asked.

“Technically, I am?” Wally asked, motioning towards the second setup next to his current experiment. “I’m just… multitasking.”

“Multitasking.” The lab instructor looked almost amused by this, which was usually a good sign. At least he didn’t seem too angry, which was always a bad one. The man leaned down so he was eye level with the flask. “You deliberately arranged it to look like the setup for today’s lab. Clever. You know, you actually probably could’ve gotten away with it, but we didn’t assign any round bottom flasks.”

“Yeah, I, uh… brought my own.”

That earned Wally a scoff. “ _Okay_. Well…” He looked down at his notebook, looking for his name. “…Wallace—”

“Wally,” he corrected automatically.

“Wally, I can’t have you running your own experiments during my lab,” he chided, inspecting one of the flasks.

“ _Don’t_ ,” Wally said, trying to grab the flask from the TA’s hands as he picked it up, but the man pulled it back closer to his own chest and gave Wally a stern look that said ‘ _explain_ ’. “It’s—I, um… I usually have everything I need but I don’t have much space at home to set things up anymore,” Wally said. “Plus. there’s no safety equipment, which is a bit dangerous, I needed the fume hood.”

The TA held the flask up, looking at it through the light. “Looks like you need a rotovap. Which you’re not going to get in this lab anyway,” he said, and then he looked back down at Wally. “I’m going to hold onto this. Meet me after class.”

“What? But…!” The idea of letting someone just take the extracts he made out of a drug no one was supposed to know existed seemed like a terrible idea. On the other hand, so did admitting he had an illegal drug. “Look, I don’t have… that’s my uncle’s.” Oh, he was going to hell.

“You’re doing your uncle’s homework?” he asked skeptically.

“ _No_. He doesn’t know, I just… he works at a crime lab,” Wally said. “And he mentioned something about drugs on a crime scene. I wanted to see if I could figure out what he found and duplicate it.”

His TA fixed him with an odd, contemplative look but shook his head. “Clear your work bench and stick to the protocol you’ve been assigned. Don’t do anyone else’s work in my lab.”

And with that, his instructor left to address another student, who was having trouble setting up the distillation apparatus, with Wally’s flask still in hand.

Wally stared in muted horror as his TA walked off with his sample of Velocity 9.

 _Shit_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be fair, it's not safe to keep V9 anywhere.


	5. Chapter 5

Dick didn’t expect to find himself back in Central so soon. Not in costume, and not in secret. It was just proper etiquette in their community to give the local hero a heads’-up when just visiting them in their city. It was one of those general rules, like never barge in on someone’s home unannounced, never call after nine o’clock, and leave the toilet seat as you found it when using someone else’s bathroom.

But this wasn’t a social call, and Dick didn’t plan on getting caught on Hunter’s home turf. He just needed to find the so-called Kid. Make sure he wasn’t what Batman and Roy and Kaldur were all saying he was.

The thought had nagged at Dick, but even if there were someone to voice his concerns to, he would have kept his mouth shut on the subject. As a leader, he couldn’t afford doubt, and if he made a mistake, he’d simply have to regain his footing and keep moving.

Hope you don’t make a mistake, prepare for one in case you do.

He activated the tracker he’d left on the Kid and followed the beeping trail, which had sat stationary on the GPS map since he had arrived in Central. Wherever the Kid was or had left his hat, it had been sitting in the same place for the past fifteen minutes.

There was something off about all of this. It was a small, quiet neighborhood with trimmed lawns and clean sidewalks. Not a place he’d imagine to find a criminal, but Dick didn’t let his guard down, in case he found the Kid robbing a home.

Dick didn’t dismiss the thought, but he did do his best to consider the other possibilities.

If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that criminals could come from all sorts of walks in life. For all he knew, the Kid was just an ordinary guy, living the white picket fence life when he wasn’t using his powers of superspeed to run all over the city unseen. It made no sense for him to have been in one place for so long, after all. Not when his MO was that he never stayed long enough for someone to react and bring in the police.

The house he arrived at was nondescript with a tidy lawn and well-maintained patio. Single-story. Locked doors. Dick circled the house, checking windows and listening for any movement. When he found none, he approached the sliding glass door and slipped the narrow end of his batarang in the crevice between the window and its frame. With a small flick of his wrist, he unlocked the door with practiced smoothness but, upon walking inside, he froze at the sight of the wireless home alarm system.

He recognized the brand of security. It was the same brand that Bruce used at the mansion. Not as high-tech as the cave’s security system, and this brand was still one of the older, less expensive models, but it was still more expensive than the average home alarm. Considering how peaceful the neighborhood appeared, the presence of a high-quality home security system felt a little out of place. Most people eventually neglected their security after a while.

Familiar with the program, Dick deactivated it and passed through the kitchen, continuing to roam around the home.

Everything was well-ordered, except for the couch, which looked as if it had been slept in recently, with a comforter folded and left on the side with a pillow on top.

He felt uncomfortable. Intrusive. He kept moving.

Dick stopped by the first door down a hallway and opened it, but stopped with the door half cracked. He turned around to look at the pictures that sporadically decorated the walls, and after a beat, he backtracked. Back in the living room, there were more pictures, framed and left on drawers by the television. He inspected them quickly and moved on to a stand by the front door. Keys. Coins. Mail.

He still had a hard time believing it, but with gloved hands, he flipped through the mail, needing only a cursory glance at the names printed above the address to cement his suspicions. He was at the Allens’. The tracer he had left on the Kid had led him straight to the Flash’s home. It had been  _left_  there.

Was it a warning? A joke? Dick was about to go back through the house to look for the tracker but stopped at the sound of a car rolling up the driveway.

Damn. For a moment, he considered sticking around, telling the Flash about the possible threat, but upon hearing the voices of other people, he ultimately decided against it. The Flash wouldn’t know who he was, and it’d be hard for Dick to explain his presence in their home if they had guests.

He took a moment to reactivate the security and left the way he came in, through the sliding glass door. By the time he had it closed and locked, Dick had only just heard the car doors beginning to slam shut. They’d never even know he was there.

As Robin left the neighborhood and headed for the closest Zeta Beam entry point, he wondered how he was going to tell Batman about all of this. There was no avoiding it now, now that the Kid apparently knew the Flash’s secret identity. He’d have to admit to meeting the Kid before. Tell him how the Kid somehow knew his secret too. Dick didn’t look forward to that.

Dick couldn’t quite bring himself to call his current feeling a stab of betrayal. To be fair, the Kid had quite honestly told him that he couldn’t be trusted. It was that outright sincerity that had Dick doubting his word, mistaking it for humility and modesty.

…It didn’t make sense.

Dick was missing something to all of this. Before he brought all of this to Bruce’s attention, he could at least make sure he had all the facts.

* * *

Wally hadn’t really expected to see his uncle waiting for him after school in Iris’s SUV. As cool as it was that Uncle Barry had offered to pick him up, Wally didn’t really like surprises, especially when he made it a point to know as much as he could about Uncle Barry’s daily schedule.

“Iris got held up on the job,” Uncle Barry explained to Wally as he loaded his bike into the trunk next to his mom’s wheelchair, folded up in the back for convenience. He climbed into the back seat with a quick greeting and a hug for his mother. “I thought I’d offer to pick you and your mom up.”

“But don’t you have work right now?” Wally asked.

“Yeah, but the police captain’s always had a soft spot for me. I explained the situation to him, and he put in a word for me with the lab director. Until you guys are back on your feet, so to speak,” he added, giving his mom an apologetic grin, “my schedule’s going to be more flexible.”

Great, Wally thought sarcastically to himself, but the concerns he could have had were dulled by the fact that it was actually pretty nice of Barry to help. He couldn’t really hold that against him. Uncle Barry was just too great.

“Barry has an easier time helping me get around,” his mom added. Wally looked at the wheelchair in the back. “Oh, don’t get that look,” she chided. It took her a moment to try and find what else to say. “There was nothing you could’ve done about this.”

Wally didn’t agree but apparently didn’t do well enough in hiding it either.

“Just don’t worry about it, okay?” Mary asked, giving Wally a thin-lipped smile. “I worry when you worry. And then this’ll never end.”

Wally shrugged but forced the edges of his lips upward in a half-assed but definite attempt for her to see.

“What’s done is done,” he said, which probably wasn’t the answer she wanted but was a less uncomfortable balance between what she wanted to hear and the truth. He could’ve stopped all this from happening before, but it was too late and there was no point in beating himself up over it now. He had work to do, and now that he had failed to use the school’s chemistry lab in order to test the V9, he’d have to find some other way.

He needed to confirm the drug was his. If it was connected to his father, he could trace it back to the man, and once he found him…

“Kid?”

Wally snapped out of it instantly, his head jerking and looking at Uncle Barry in surprise. Barry saw him through the rearview mirror as he did and grinned. “Lost in your head?” he asked. “Not always the best place to be.”

He was probably right.

“Sorry, Uncle Barry. What did you say?”

“I was asking you about school. You know, you’ve been having lunch with Iris a lot lately, but I haven’t had enough time to hang out with you, either,” Uncle Barry said. “What’ve you been up to lately?”

“Oh. Nothing much,” Wally said. He gave a small, dry chuckle. “Got in a little trouble in my chemistry lab today, actually.”

“ _What_?” Mary said, turning around in her seat to fix Wally with an unhappy look.

“It wasn’t a big deal,” Wally said quickly. “I was just doing other work in my lab. The TA didn’t like it.”

“You’re going to major in chemistry, right?” Barry asked. “What’re you planning on doing with it?”

“Hadn’t really put too much thought into it,” Wally said. “I figured if my grades are good enough, I can use brute force to get into graduate school..”

“Do you really think you can do that?”

“It’s how I got here,” Wally shrugged.

“You know, Central City’s crime lab is pretty fantastic. One of the nation’s best. All of the law enforcement, none of the getting shot at,” Uncle Barry told him.

“Ah hah.” Wally laughed weakly at the thought of  _him_  working to put criminals behind bars. Admittedly, he’d be in the perfect position to hide his own crimes, if he continued as the Kid for long enough, but that just seemed… too low. Even for him. “Actually, I was thinking I’d go into teaching.”

“I thought you hated high school?” Barry asked and then winced as Mary glared at him. “I mean, I can’t imagine you teaching a bunch of kids. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that you still seem like a kid to me. You make me feel so old.”

“I’m  _eighteen_ ,” he complained. “And yeah, I’m not teaching a bunch of kids. If I can get a job at a university as a professor, I could just teach and then spend most of my time doing my own studies and writing papers.”

“You know, I always thought you’d do something a little more ambitious,” Barry said. “But I guess if you keep up your grades the way you’ve been, at least you’ll have some definite job security.

Wally scoffed. “I’m not looking for job security. I want a Nobel,” he grinned. “And if I have to put up with a bunch of college kids and years of research to do it, I will. How’s  _that_  for ambition, Uncle Barry?”

“Good luck,” Uncle Barry grinned, though there was a definite note of faith in the sound of Barry and his mom’s laughter. He pulled up on the driveway to his and Iris’s home

Wally had to take things one step at a time. He had to finish this business with his father before he moved onto his next goal. And he had to do something about V9. Even if most of the Rogues gave everything drug-related a wide berth, Wally couldn’t afford to let something like this get away, even if it didn’t have anything to do with his father. His speed gave him an advantage over other people, and he couldn’t just let any drug addict on the street have it.

Wally opened the door for his uncle and his mom, letting them inside, and excused himself to go to his room. Well. Not  _his_  room. Someone else’s clothes had already been in there, a few lonely T-shirts and sleeping pants that Wally had transferred into a single drawer. He had filled the rest of the dresser and the closet with clothes he’d brought from home.

Their apartment hadn’t been wheelchair friendly. Seeing as he was staying at Barry and Iris’s home until his mom could manage without a wheelchair, he was going to be here for a while. Wally put his backpack on the bed and pulled out the remaining samples of V9. He tried his best not to worry over the extract that his TA had confiscated. According to Piper, the drug was so new to the streets, the police barely recognized it as one. Odds were, if his lab instructor looked into it, he wouldn’t realize what it was without running several more extensive tests.

He organized the V9 into as straight a stack as he could, though the edges were uneven where the previous owner had apparently cut them into squares by hand. Wally glanced around the room, looking for a place to hide it.

Wally got on his hands and knees, pushing the samples underneath the bed. After a moment, he paused. That would be the first place anyone would look if someone were to go through his belongings, second only to maybe under the mattress. Making a face, he reached back underneath the bed, grabbing the Velocity 9 patches again when the hand bracing himself against the ground shifted under his weight a bit.

Wally looked down at the floor under his hand. He dropped the drug by the side of his knee and gently pushing the wooden floorboard back and forth underneath his palms. It was definitely loose. Definitely deliberately loose. His fingernails scratched against the edge and he levered one end of the board up. It was more than a little bit cliched, but underneath was a hidden niche.

Wally lifted the yellow and red material from inside and froze at the sight of a jagged red lightning symbol.

Oh.

Well, he probably should have expected that. Of course the Flash’s sidekick had a place in this household. Wally quickly shoved Zoom’s costume back down into the hidden compartment, grabbed the drugs, and yanked them away from the costume, as if leaving them too close together would bring bad luck. The last thing he needed was for Zoom to come back for this spare costume and find Wally’s drugs sitting next to it or something.

His mind flashed back to when he’d walked into his room. The door had been cracked open. Had he left the door open when he headed for school this morning? Had the room been tidied up while he was out?

Maybe it would be safer to keep the drugs on him.

… _No_. Close but not too close. Wally paced around the room, lost in thought. He needed to start considering a small ‘home away from home’. A small personal space that no one else knew about or could intrude upon. Maybe he could even set his own lab up in there one day instead of sneaking experiments in behind the TA’s back, because  _that_  had definitely backfired.

But for now, Wally just needed a quick place to hide it. Like,  _right now_.

As if on cue, the door began to open, and Wally ran to the dresser, where he’d left one of his binders and slipped the V9 inside.

“Wally, Uncle Barry’s asking if you want to help with dinner,” Mary said, peering inside of the room. “But if you’re busy with homework…”

“No,” Wally said quickly, pushing the drawer shut with a hip. “No, I’m not.”

“Oh, good,” his mom said, rolling her wheelchair backwards. Wally swiftly strode out into the hallway, getting behind her and started pulling her wheelchair back for her, saving her the trouble of maneuvering backwards. “I can do it myself, Wally,” she chided him as he walked backward, keeping his eyes turned over his shoulder.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it. Watch your fingers,” he added, and his mom let go of the wheel, sending Wally an annoyed glare. While the hallways in Barry and Iris’s house weren’t exactly narrow, it was still a little difficult for his mom to maneuver and change directions in the middle of them.

“You don’t have to go out of your way to help me,” his mom said unhappily, her arms crossed in front of her chest now that they weren’t occupied with turning the wheels.

“I want to,” Wally assured her as he steered her away from his room and back to the living room. It was the least he could do.


	6. Chapter 6

There were nights when missions ran… well, not smoothly—never smoothly—but there were good nights: successful missions with minimal injury and emotional trauma. This was not one of those nights. 

Not that Hunter was emotionally traumatized by the night’s events, but if he was, it probably didn’t help that he was pretty sure he’d seen Icicle Jr. making googly eyes at Artemis all night. He had punched Icicle Jr. in her name, but even more disturbing was the fact that for a moment, he couldn’t tell whether or not she was giving him the same look right back.

Poor and slightly disturbing choices in romantic interests aside, tonight’s mission… bothered him. It bothered him in a way that he really couldn’t say. Not to his team, anyway. 

It was too late to stop by Jay and Joan’s home now. They liked to go to bed early, and he didn’t want to bother them at this time of night. Barry and Iris, on the other hand, worked later nights. It was only after he had his key in the door that he remembered why he hadn’t been there in the past few weeks and almost left, but someone inside definitely heard the jangling keys and was already coming to check on the door. 

He was torn between sticking to his guns and staying or leaving before anyone could reach the door. He wasn’t avoiding Wally or anything. He just didn’t want to be at Barry’s place when Wally was there. It felt as if he was intruding on time that Barry and Iris were supposed to be spending with their family. 

He stayed anyway, unlocking the door and pushing it forward. They would’ve realized it was him anyway, and Iris would probably tease him if it seemed as if Hunter was running away. 

He walked inside and found himself face to face with Wally, who had been coming to answer the door. 

“Hunter,” Wally said, his eyebrows raised in surprise. “Hi.”

“Hey, Wally,” he responded. “I was just… in the neighborhood.”

“Are you okay?” he asked, and Hunter was distinctly aware of the fact that he probably looked like he’d seen better days. 

Hunter laughed a little anxiously, rubbing the back of his neck and thanking god that Tuppence Terror had only managed a glancing blow. It had been enough to knock him flat on his back for a whole second, but at least it wouldn’t leave a heavy purple bruise on the side of his face. A brownish-yellow, at best, and he once again thanked his genes for his dusky skin, which usually did well to hide those light bruises from passing glances. He wondered if the nick on his jaw had stopped bleeding where Ravager had nicked it with her sword. A  _sword_. In any case, he'd used his powers to speed the healing process up, but only marginally. The use of his powers in such a way always left him feeling off kilter, which generally didn't bode well for his mood or temper.

“MMA club. Got a little rough today,” he lied. He did have a membership, at least, though he rarely used it. Wally stared at Hunter and then responded with a flat “oh”, like he wasn’t sure whether to believe Hunter or not. “So you’re staying at Barry and Iris’s,” he said, as if he hadn’t known this already. 

“Yeah. You used to, too, right?” Wally asked. 

“Did Iris tell you that?” he asked.

“She and Barry hadn’t really mentioned it. I just saw your stuff in my room. Well, their spare room,” Wally explained. Hunter froze. Of  _course_  they’d give Wally his old room. It only made sense. But—

“Hunter,” Barry said, walking over to them. “I didn’t know you were coming over tonight. Iris and I don’t even have any dessert ready.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Hunter said, remembering he always called before he came back from a mission. Barry and Iris would sometimes make something or pull out the ice cream or order some food. He hadn’t given the post-mission desserts much thought. “Actually, it’s just been a long night.”

“Bad day?” Barry asked, looking a little concerned. 

“It was all right,” Hunter said. He took a moment to mentally sort out the important details of the story, careful to keep the details vague with Wally present. “Saw a familiar face, though. Someone I knew in foster. He went to a pretty good family, but I guess somehow things just went wrong for him.”

“I’m sorry,” Barry said. 

At Wally’s puzzled look, Hunter explained to him. “I have an internship at the police department,” he said, which was true enough, even though it really had little to do with the events that actually took place that night. “I write up psychological profiles on convicted criminals, and one of the names was familiar to me.”

“Are you okay?” Wally asked him. Hunter looked at the redhead, a little surprised that the question had come from him, but he shrugged.

“We weren’t close or anything. I was never really friendly, and Owen was younger than me. We never really spoke. I just thought he’d turn out better,” Hunter said. There was no nostalgia or anguish, but seeing Owen Mercer’s face had been more than a little off-putting. And, in a way, disappointing. “Actually, the main reason I came here,” he said, casting an embarrassed glance at Barry, “was because I kind of… wanted to thank you, I guess. For keeping an eye on me. I could’ve turned out really badly.”

Barry’s face shifted from a concerned look and split into a wide grin that spread across his face. “You just needed a little bit of help along the way,” he said. “But everything you are now is a result of your own decisions, and you’re a better person because of it.”

Barry managed to sneak a hand onto Hunter’s shoulder, a detail he had barely noticed until Wally cleared his throat with a sheepish grin. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just wondering if maybe I should, uh, excuse myself or something.” 

The hand dropped from his shoulder. Hunter rolled his eyes. “Shut up,” he said. 

“No, seriously. I could go to my room while you guys have your bonding moment,” Wally said, and Hunter was immediately reminded about the issue regarding Wally’s sleeping arrangements. 

“That reminds me,” he said quickly. “It didn’t occur to me before, but I should probably pick up some of my stuff so Wally has more room.”

“There’s hardly anything in there,” Barry pointed out. 

“Well, you know, there are some  _personal_  things in there that I’d probably want to keep to myself,” Hunter said, giving Barry a look. 

“I saw nothing,” Wally said, his hands raised appeasingly. “I mean, I moved things around a bit since I needed space for my clothes.”

“Well, I should still move my things out,” Hunter said. “You mind if I go in and get them?”

Wally made a face. It lasted only a split second, but Hunter had seen the discomfort flash across his face. “I’ll go with you.”

“It’s not much, I can get it myself,” he insisted, though Wally didn’t look ready to back down. 

“How about,” Barry started, “Hunter, you get some of the things you want right now. Now that I know you need your things, I can pick them up later tomorrow and drop them off at your place.”

Fair enough, though Hunter hadn’t really been interested in picking up his clothes, but there wasn’t much point in keeping them here anyway. He headed towards his room—Barry’s guest bedroom—with Wally following behind him.

“You’re not hiding anything in there, are you?” Hunter said. 

“Would I tell you if I were?” Wally snorted. “But nah, I just feel weird knowing there’s someone near my things.”

He hadn’t really expected Wally to be a territorial type of person. Hunter made note of that, but it felt a little out of place with all the other characteristics he’d observed in the redhead so far. 

“Sorry,” Wally said, a little suddenly. 

“For following me?” Hunter asked. 

“No, for taking your room,” he said in a deadpan voice as if it wasn’t a big deal. Except if Wally had felt it hadn’t needed saying, he wouldn’t have. 

Huh. Hunter mentally filed it away: interpreting his actions a little differently, and Wally could be considered territorial—or, at least, excessively preoccupied with other people’s boundaries and what was considered ‘trespassing’. 

As they walked in the room, Wally walked in front of Hunter. “Sorry, I just…” His voice trailed off as he kicked a few t-shirts on the floor into a corner and then got his backpack and pushed it on top of them. “I’m not usually this messy.”

Hunter shrugged as Wally sat on the bed and watched him. Feeling slightly self-conscious, he turned with his back toward Wally and pulled open a drawer. 

“I moved all your things into the drawers on the right,” came the instant response. “Sorry. I, uh… needed space for my things.”

Judging by the clothes piled in the corner of the room, Wally still hadn’t really had enough space for all of his own things. 

“I’ll get it out of your hair, then,” Hunter said. He rubbed at the corner of his eye and forced himself to remain casual. He reminded himself that Barry knew one of his spare costumes was still in there and he’d bring it as soon as Wally left for school the next morning. It didn’t make him any less tense, though, under Wally’s watchful eye as the redhead watched him from the edge of the bed. He sat almost directly above the hidden panel that contained his costume.

Wally shifted a little anxiously in place as Hunter fiddled around the drawers. When he started stacking his clothes on top of the dresser, Wally suddenly made a face. And then looked down at the floorboard under his foot. 

Hunter did the first thing he could think of. He turned around, ‘accidentally’ knocking down the folded stack of his clothes, along with the other objects that had been sitting atop the dresser. Various knickknacks flew off the edge and onto the ground, including a binder and its contents. 

Wally froze. 

“Sorry,” Hunter said immediately, though at least Wally wasn’t paying attention to the floor anymore. “I’ll clean this up.”

“No, no, it’s my stuff anyway. Mostly mine. I got it,” Wally said quickly, rushing forward to gather some of the fallen papers. 

That’s when Hunter looked down at the papers that had fallen out of the binder, strewn across the floor. Between two sheets of paper, a small white corner stuck out. 

Hunter picked up the patch. 

“What the hell is this?” he demanded, shoving the patch up in his face. 

He watched Wally’s face struggle to maintain a neutral expression. “It’s… I-I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” he repeated. “ _You don’t know_.” He grabbed Wally’s arm, forcefully twisting his wrist so the thin pale skin was exposed, and held the patch a finger’s width away from his forearm. “So if I peeled the patch and stuck it on your arm, you don’t know what would happen?”

“What the—? Get off!” Wally tried to pull his arm away but couldn’t escape Hunter’s grip. He changed his approach almost instantly, with such speed that caught Hunter off guard. He rocked forward, straight into Hunter, who fell backwards with Wally on top. 

“Ow!” Hunter shouted as his head hit one of the drawers with a thud.

“Get it away from me!” he snapped, wrenching his arm out of Hunter’s grip. 

Hunter dropped the V9 on the floor beside him and grabbed him again, one hand back around Wally’s arm and his forearm pressing down on the base of his throat. “So you  _do_  know what it is. And not only do you have it, but you keep it in your uncle’s house? Barry works for the  _police_ , can you imagine what kind of trouble that could cause him?”

“I was  _going_  to get rid of it,” Wally muttered jerking back and forth, trying to free himself, but Hunter kept his grip this time.

“What made you think it was a good idea? What is  _wrong_  with you?” he hissed, leaning his head forward to glare directly into Wally’s eyes, but Wally continued to avoid eye contact, choosing to stare down at the fist that clenched a bundle of his T-shirt. 

“ _You’re_  what’s wrong with me. I can spend years working on making something  _great_ , and some jackass always just comes in and takes  _everything_ ,” he muttered, his voice sounding strained to their ears. “People like you, everything just falls into your lap.”

“You think I didn’t work my ass off to get where I am now?” Hunter said angrily.

Wally stopped and finally looked up at Hunter. Really looked, as if taking in every detail of Hunter’s face and memorizing it. Finally, he looked away guiltily. “No,” he said unhappily, as if admitting it was physically hurting him. “No, you deserved it.”

He had felt the tension in Wally’s body beginning to loosen, and in response, Hunter carelessly responded in kind, weakening his grip on Wally. Barry’s nephew—his  _nephew!_ —tried to use the opportunity to pull himself free of Hunter’s grasp, but only succeeded in losing his balance as he knelt haphazardly. To avoid falling flat on Hunter, he ended up bracing one hand on Hunter’s knee, and then quickly transferred it to the dresser behind Hunter’s head, more comfortable for him to lean against. 

“I took something from you,” Hunter said finally.

“What?”

“You think I took something from you,” he repeated.

“I didn’t say—” Wally started to argue, but Hunter cut him off.

“But you think it. You think about it enough to spit it out on impulse.”

Wally chewed on his lip anxiously. He had a weird expression on his face. Embarrassed. Annoyed. Worried. An amalgamation of a dozen different tiny microexpressions that few people would’ve caught, unless they had abilities or training like Hunter’s. “It’s not—” Wally began to say, but he was interrupted by the sound of the door opening.

“I heard a noise. Did something…” Iris walked in the room and stared at Wally and Hunter. “…fall?”

That odd expression dropped instantaneously from Wally’s face as Iris took out her phone from her pocket and snapped a picture of the two of them, with Wally kneeling in between Hunter’s knees and their faces within a foot’s distance from one other. 

“Carry on,” she deadpanned, backing out of the room and closing the door.

 _Completely_  forgetting the gravity of the situation, Wally’s eyes widened almost comically as he panicked, scrambling up and away from Hunter and then chasing after Iris through the door.

“Aunt Iris?” he heard Wally say, his voice muffled through the wall and growing quieter. “ _No_.”

Flake. 

Hunter grumbled, sitting up and sweeping Wally’s papers into a messy stack as he picked out what patches of V9 he could find. He was tempted to go through the rest of Wally’s things in search of anything else incriminating in Barry and Iris’s house, but found himself so sickened by the idea that he just couldn’t. He didn’t come over to Barry’s place for a drug bust, of all things. 

He closed the dresser drawers behind him, feeling a fresh wave of fury at the entire situation. He came here to blow off steam, and he couldn’t even do that in his own…former room. Barry’s home. Wally had drugs, and he stashed them in  _Barry’s_  home. What was he going to tell Barry? Barry might not be able to bring himself to see it, but the police department could often be a heavily political place. If word got out at the CCPD about his nephew, how would that end up reflecting on him?

Hunter couldn’t imagine keeping something like this from Barry, but at the same time, he didn’t want to be the person to tell his mentor about it either. At least Wally wasn’t  _on_  the drug. He doubted Wally would’ve thrashed so hard to avoid getting the stuff on his skin otherwise.

Hunter wanted to hit something. Or someone. Admittedly, he got to work out most of his frustrations earlier that night, but coming home had only restored everything he had managed to vent, and Wally was apparently too preoccupied with trying to convince Iris that the two of them hadn’t been having some kind of gay moment. Because that had priority over proving that he wasn’t using drugs. 

Unbelievable. He couldn’t understand why—or  _how_ —Wally had these. It especially didn’t help that the person in question was too preoccupied with chasing down Iris and her camera phone, shouting ‘no homo’ rather than  _dealing with the actual important issue_.

Since inhaling and exhaling sharply through his nose didn’t didn’t help him as much as Black Canary insisted, Hunter searched through Wally’s books and binders a second time, flipping through pages and shaking them by their spines. Once he was sure he’d gotten all of the patches, he picked up and left, not in the mood to stay a single moment longer.

* * *

“I ordered coffee,” Hunter said irritably as the waitress set down a slice of pie and a cup of milk in front of him. 

“It’s half past midnight,” she said, unperturbed by his mood. “You’re not getting coffee.”

“I am  _not_  paying for this, Ashley!” he informed her backside as she turned around to put down the tray.

“I’ll just have to charge you extra for consultation,” she told him as she returned and sat down in the booth across from him. 

“What, I don’t get a discount?” he asked. 

“The way you dumped me, I ought to squeeze every last penny from you,” Ashley scoffed. She rolled her eyes at the awkward silence she got in return for the comment. “Are we going to keep being awkward about this?”

“Are you going to keep bringing it up?” he shot back. 

“Ooh. Snarky,” she noted. “Long night?”

“I just need to vent,” Hunter finally said. “But so much crap happened, I don’t know how or where to start.”

“Chronologically always works,” she suggested. 

Even though it had barely been more than an hour or two since the team had finished the mission, his issue with Owen seemed distant now. Wally’s situation was still settled on the forefront of his mind. Hunter paused. Ashley really wasn’t his first choice when it came to venting about things. She was a great listener, but she couldn’t ever know about Zoom, and he had to be careful how he worded things sometimes.

“Do you remember me ever mentioning a guy named Owen? Ever?” he asked her. 

“Not that I remember,” she said. “Should I?”

“No. I probably never brought him up. We were at the same group home for a while, but he didn’t have to stay there too long. He was younger and had fewer… behavioral issues,” Hunter said. “It’s easier to taken in by a foster family when you’re too young to fully realize what happened to your parents. It’s less troublesome.” 

“Did you run into him recently?” Ashley asked. 

“Yes,” Hunter said, but then he backtracked. “Well, no. But I heard about him. He’s been arrested. I don’t know if he’ll be tried as an adult or not, but he’s still pretty young, I think. We might even get to see him on the news.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. 

Hunter shrugged. “I didn’t know him well. I mean, he was way younger and only around for a few weeks before he got transferred back out,” he said. He took one of the spoons that Ashley brought with the pie and dipped it in the milk, stirring it absentmindedly, just for the sake of doing something with his hands. He was surprised he even recognized Owen, let alone remembered him. “Something about it just bothers me.”

“How old was Owen, again?” she asked. 

“Um.” He never really even knew how old Owen was when they were kids. He hadn’t been the talkative type, even when he was younger. Especially when he was that age. “I’d guess between fourteen and seventeen.”

“Where are his parents?” Ashley asked, a question that stopped Hunter dead in his tracks. She noticed his reaction and nodded. “There you go. That’s what you were missing.”

“I didn’t think about that.”

“Pretty big detail for a  _police profiler_.”

“Intern,” he corrected. “And I wasn’t really in the right mindset.”

“ _Excuses_ ,” Ashley scoffed. 

“I guess I’ll have to look into his family,” Hunter mused, finally taking a first bite of the pie. Well, he didn’t  _have_  to. “Something about him makes me feel bad.”

“That’s called empathy,” Ashley said. 

“No, it’s  _not_ ,” Hunter immediately said. “Well, I mean it technically  _is_ , but it’s not  _this_. Something about this just feels… bad,” he finished lamely, unable to think of any other way to phrase it. “It’s just wrong.”

“Well,” she said, “if you don’t know enough to figure it out and can’t figure it out enough to even explain it, there probably isn’t much point in losing sleep over it. Of course, if it’s as ominous as you’re making it sound, you could probably commit more time into finding out what’s freaking you out. Dig around, look up the rest of his profile, and read into his history until you can figure it out.”

“Getting my hands on his records might be pretty hard,” he mused. 

“I thought he was arrested,” she said. “You can’t get your hands on his files?”

Right. Seeing as he’d been arrested on the other side of the United States, he was pretty sure this case was beyond the CCPD. “Owen’s case isn’t under the department’s jurisdiction,” he said, which was true enough. Not missing the detail that Hunter had somehow gotten eyes on the information anyway, the edge of Ashley’s mouth tweaked, but before she could ask him, Hunter shrugged. “Iris,” he said, by way of explanation. 

“Aah,” she nodded, any suspicion she might’ve had immediately quelled by the vague, one-word answer. “Of course. How’s she been lately?” 

“Very happy,” Hunter said, which made him feel a little worse about the situation. “Her nephew goes to school here now. After his mom got hurt, they’ve been staying with her and Barry. A lot of family bonding going on.”

“Fun times,” she said, but at Hunter’s unhappy look, she frowned. “Something wrong?”

“I, ah, I don’t even know if I should. Say anything. I mean, of  _course_ , I should, I’m just not sure who I should talk to about this.” The last time something like this happened, it did not end well.

“Well, there’s always me,” Ashley gently pressed. “I mean, that’s why you’re here, right?”

Hunter crossed his arms in front of his chest and slouched in his seat. “I caught him with drugs.”

“What kind?” she asked. 

“What does it even matter what kind?” he said. “He isn’t supposed to have them at all.”

Ashley backpedaled and shrugged. “Just saying, it might be something he has a prescription for,” she suggested, but Hunter shook his head. 

“This isn’t the kind of stuff you could get a prescription for,” he said. 

“That bad?” she asked, making a slightly pained face. 

“The fact that he  _has_  it…” Hunter’s voice trailed off. “…He shouldn’t have them at all,” he repeated himself, straightening in his seat. 

“What do you mean by that?”

“This stuff has barely hit the streets. He shouldn’t even have it at all,” he said, leaning back in his seat. How  _had_  Wally gotten them? He was new to Central, he didn’t have any sort of connections beyond family. No close friends or associates, beyond his mother, aunt, and uncle—

His work. He did deliveries. Hunter struggled to remember what company Wally worked for but came up blank. It was something he never really asked. Now he needed to find out.

“What exactly does he have—?” Ashley started to ask. 

“I have to go,” Hunter said abruptly, getting up out of the booth. Ashley looked confused by the sudden shift, but she stood up along with him anyway. 

“Are you sure?” she asked. 

“Yeah. I know what to do now,” he lied. He didn’t know what to do, but at least he knew he could do something. “Thanks.” He leaned in for a hug instinctively but jerked back as he caught himself. If Ashley had noticed, she didn’t comment on it. As he pulled out his wallet, she placed her hand over his and pushed it back. 

“No charge,” she said, leaning up and kissing him on the cheek. “Hope you get things sorted out.”

Hunter fumbled around, nearly dropping his wallet. “I, uh…”  _Sorry._  “It was good seeing you again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's like no matter what he does with it, someone always finds his drugs.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since one of you guys asked, I decided to give you an extra update on Valentine’s Day, but I hate spacing chapters too closely together, so here’s the next update one day early! I think you'll be pleased (or disappointed?) to find that this is a bit of a breather chapter. Also, there’s a bit of a surprise here for anyone who's into the Flash comics.

When he came back to his room, Hunter was no longer there, and a quick sweep proved that he wasn’t anywhere at the house, which meant he’d either left or Barry had hidden rooms installed somewhere. Barry told him it was the former; Wally wasn’t entirely convinced. 

At first, when it hadn’t been readily apparent what the consequences had been, Wally hadn’t been sure what to do or how to act. He had expected fallout. Exposure. But there were no accusations from his family, no speedsters knocking on his door and demanding to know his every secret. He didn’t get anything other than a muted glare from Hunter in his psychology class. 

Nothing. 

Else.

He kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. It wasn’t paranoia. Wally could  _see_ him, moving so quickly most people didn’t notice him passing. He caught glimpses of Hunter on the way to and from classes, his presence sometimes only noticeable by the red, jagged flickers streaking across campus for a split second, flickers so fast even Wally could barely see them. 

It was aggravating. It was nerve-wracking. He had no idea what Hunter was up to. 

But he did know this lack of privacy was going to be a huge problem. Hunter was watching him like a hawk. A giant red-eyed hawk.

After two days of being tailed, he knew all of this had to freaking  _stop_  when he caught sight of a massive tangle of red sparks dissipating in the air just as he arrived at work. His boss looking frayed and harassed and angry, and it was Wally’s fault. 

“Chester, what happened?” Wally asked as he arrived, stepping down on the kickstand as he got off his bike and jogged lightly over to the older man. 

“ _Nothing_ ,” the man said irritably. “Nothing happened, and nothing is  _going_  to happen.”

“What?”

“Zoom was just here,” Chester said. “He’s been wanting to go through all of the records to see what we deliver. I had to explain to him a dozen times: I  _don’t_ violate my customers’ privacy. He has some nerve, questioning the legitimacy of my work. I haven’t stepped out of line since I started this business.”

“… _What_?” Wally repeated.

His boss shook his head. “Never mind, Wally. Anyway, I’m afraid there isn’t going to be much for you to do today,” he said. “Looks like you’re going to have an early day. Sorry for the trouble.”

“I could stick around afterwards if you want,” Wally offered apologetically. “Pick up some pizza on the way back.”

His boss laughed. “Ah, between you and me, I think that’d be an entire day’s check,” he shook his head. “I don’t know how a guy your size could eat as much as you do. As much as  _I_  do. No, go home. Spend some time with your mom.”

“You sure?” Wally asked. 

“Just go. I have a fort to hold and paperwork to sort out,” Chester said before lumbering off back to his office.

Wally glared at Chester’s back, not at anything that that man had done, but at the fact that he couldn’t even get away from Hunter at work. From  _Zoom_. 

A yellow blur and a thin red line shot across the street again, passing through traffic and between cars, completely unnoticed or ignored by the locals.

Nope. He wasn’t going to take this lying down.

Chester was a decent guy. There were people working for him, more efficient at their jobs with their cars than Wally was on his bike, but he had hired Wally all the same, and the least he could do was keep other people from getting dragged into his mess. 

Wally took his bike and headed downtown in the direction of the Rogues’ bar. He couldn’t get too close, and he could only hope that Piper was in there. If he needed to, he could always just linger in the area a little while longer. 

“ _Piper_ ,” he hissed under his breath as he passed by the block on his bike. “ _I’m being watched. I need you to meet me at…_ ” He paused momentarily. He didn’t know Hunter’s schedule or personal life well enough to determine when he was free and when he was tied up. He’d just have to guess and hope he could sneak out of Barry’s house without being noticed. “ _At Central U. At midnight. And don’t you_ dare _show up in a costume…_

* * *

“Never thought I’d see you out of the suit,” Piper commented gleefully at the Wally’s appearance. 

Wally self consciously lowered the brim of his baseball cap lower over his eyes and adjusted his hoodie. It was a bit warm for the weather, but otherwise, he felt exposed. He still felt exposed, in fact. “When in Rome, speak French,” Wally muttered. 

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes,” Piper said. 

“I don’t think I care,” he snorted. 

The older Rogue rolled his eyes. “Anyway, we should move. If we’re doing something tonight, we’ll have maybe an hour to go through with it,” he said. 

“What do you mean by that?” Wally asked. 

“You didn’t exactly include a lot of details in your message, so I commissioned a last-minute distraction from Heat Wave,” Piper said. “Something somewhere is burning right now. Consider the Flash and Zoom off our backs for the next hour at  _least_.”

“I didn’t ask for that!” Wally hissed, alarmed.

“Well, you made it sound like this was an emergency. I thought you’d appreciate the added security. It’s not as if anyone’s going to get hurt. Not too badly. Probably,” Piper said, eventually looking a little concerned before shaking his head, as if brushing the thought off. “What did you call me here for?” he asked. “You said you were being watched?”

“I can handle that. I just needed help with electronic locks,” he said. “You didn’t need to set an, an  _orphanage_  on fire.” 

“I assure you, all orphanages know Heat Wave’s safety drill by heart,” Piper joked. Wally gave him a disapproving look. “No, seriously, all of Central has evacuation drills for the Rogues. They’re usually safe from us,” he assured Wally.

“ _Usually_. My mom’s still in a wheelchair, you know.”

He hadn’t really meant to say it. To be fair, Piper ignored the comment completely, turning to inspect the door. “Wait,” he finally said after several long beats of silence. “You want me to break into  _this_  place?” Hartley asked, looking the building up and down. 

“Yeah,” Wally said. “So what?”

“It’s not exactly a bank,” Piper said. 

“I never said it was one,” he replied. 

Piper let out a small laugh. “I was expecting a challenge, not a school. Do you have a cell phone?”

The question caught Wally offguard. “Not on me, no?” 

“Protip: keep a burner phone on you. Never know when you might need it.” Piper pulled out his own phone, a cheap, well-worn piece of equipment. He pried the back off and dislodged the battery. “Here’s a trick I learned from, well, from an old friend. Gemini chips are hardwired to a power source plus a backup battery. If you cut this gage,” he said, tapping the a thin piece of metal under the door handle, “you’ll just activate a redundancy mechanism that’ll lock the door right back up.”

Piper backed up, and Wally moved backward to give him space and avoid getting bumped into. 

“Instead,” he said, looking around and then finally pointing to a part of the door that slightly stuck out. “Follow that conduit to… a fuse box.” Piper grinned as he located the fuse box. With his gloved hands, he pulled the panel off of the box and looked at the wires inside. Piper stripped a beige-colored wire inside the fuse box and fiddled with his phone battery and a spare bit of wire he’d been carrying on him. Wally watched over Piper’s shoulder, taking note of everything Piper did. “The filament conducts a charge, using the battery to create a surge and short the power,” he finally finished. 

There was a click as the lock on the door released. As soon as it did, Piper suddenly sprinted over back in front of the door and kicked it open. 

“What the hell!” Wally shouted in alarm as the door was forced open, though Piper’s foot left a spiderweb of cracks in the thick glass. 

“What?” Piper said, holding the door open for Wally as he followed after the older Rogue. 

“Was that really necessary?” Wally asked, frantically waving his hand at the cracked door. “I’m trying to go for subtle.”

“Subtle enough,” Piper shrugged. “We only had a few seconds before the lock reactivated itself. The battery holds a small charge.” And with that, Piper tossed the phone battery and the phone to Wally, who caught them haphazardly. “Keep it.”

“What?”

“Tip number two: keep spares,” he assured Wally, holding up a second cell phone, this one in decidedly better condition. New and complete with a customized phone case with a music note on the back. If Piper noticed Wally’s unimpressed look, he didn’t comment on it. “And then you don’t have to worry about sneaking to the bar whenever someone’s got their eye on you. They’ll be tracking the wrong phone.” Piper walked ahead. “Hurry up, slowpoke. Where to next?”

They took the elevator up to the fourth floor in what Wally felt was an awkward silence. “This is the door,” he finally said when they stopped in front of the room that was, according to Wally’s class syllabus, his TA’s lab. “Let’s not kick it in this time.” 

“What’s in here?” Piper finally asked as Wally knelt in front of the lock with his picks out in hand. Wally wondered just how long he’d been waiting to ask that. He’d been dreading the question a while now, himself.

“…Someone took the V9,” Wally said, deciding on the truth. After all, there really wasn’t much of a point in trying to lie to the Piper. “I’m getting it back.”

“Whoa,  _what_?” he said. “You mean the incredibly rare superdrugs I managed to get my hands on? You let someone take it? “What if they—?”

“ _Relax_ ,” Wally said defensively as they left the elevator and stopped in front of the door that was, according to Wally’s class syllabus, his TA’s office. “No one knows enough about V9 to identify it if they don’t know what they’re doing.”

“Except for you,” Piper said suspiciously, and Wally had to give him that, at least. 

“Except for me,” he confirmed. Wally was more used to padlocks, but the concept was similar enough that he was able to figure it out without too much of a hitch. It was a little more difficult than he was used to, but he managed, and just over a minute, too. 

“Not too bad,” Piper said appreciatively. “You’re getting better at this.”

“Not much use if everyone keeps switching to electronic locks,” Wally grumbled as he opened the door. Immediately, their ears were greeted by the thrumming sound of running machines and laboratory equipment

“It’s a dying art,” he replied, reaching up to fiddle with his earpiece. “I’m partial to combination locks myself.”

Wally walked inside the door, taking a cursory glance at the equipment. “Oh.”

“Oh what?”

When his TA had taken the drug, Wally had consoled himself with the fact that the man probably wouldnt’ even know what to do with the sample. It would take extensive testing using highly specialized forensic equipment in order to identify V9. As Wally walked into the room, recognizing the equipment in his TA’s lab, his faith in science, logic, and probability was beginning to feel compromised. There was definitely someone up there watching over him, and that someone hated his guts. 

He almost replied with an off-handed “Nothing,” but remembered that this was Piper he was talking to, the apparent living lie detector, so Wally shrugged and nodded toward some of the lab equipment off to the side of the wall. 

“Forensic chemistry stuff,” he said in an only slightly strained voice. Piper didn’t look entirely satisfied with the answer he got but let it slide when Wally started going through drawers and he followed suit. “We’re looking for a round-bottom flask. Hopefully with an off-white crystal extract still in it.”

“Crystal?”

“…It’ll look like for crusty salt,” Wally added as he finished going through the drawers. The sight of several apparatuses made him pause. “…These lights were on when we came in.”

“Yeah? So?” Piper followed Wally’s eyes to one of the apparatuses, one of them activated and on a timer so that the temperature rose a degree per minute. “…We should leave, shouldn’t we?”

Piper turned around on his heel, and ended up running face-first into Wally’s TA.

“Ow!” The other man clutched his nose with one hand and set the half-spilled cup of coffee down on the closest lab bench with the other. He looked at Piper as he stumbled, off-balance, and reached out to steady him by the arm. Even though his TA luckily didn’t recognize Piper’s face from the news reports on Rogues, he looked up and definitely knew Wally’s. “What the…?  _Wally_?”

“Wally?” Piper echoed, looking up in bewilderment, looking back and forth between Wally and his TA. 

“David!” Wally said with a brittle grin. “Uh. Hi.”

“ _Wally_ ,” Piper repeated, sounding kind of amazed, kind of amused. “And… David,” he said. “So. We know each other. Wow, okay.”

“I don’t know you,” David corrected in an accusing voice. “Who are you?”

“Ah…” Piper turned his neck to look at Wally, as if wondering what he should do, and Wally silently prayed that Piper wouldn’t hit David or do anything else that would get him in deeper trouble come next class. 

“And how did you—?” He looked around, at the open door, and back at Wally. “Why are you… what are you doing in here? Did you seriously just  _break into my lab_?” David said, sounding exasperated and tired. He rubbed spilt coffee off his hand and onto his labcoat and then suddenly jumped into action, wrapping the coat closed around himself. He buttoned it up, covering the sleeping clothes underneath.

“Nice,” Piper said, grinning as the blue shirt with the words ‘Flaming C’ emblazoned on the front disappeared behind the buttoned up lab coat. “I can’t wait for the movie. They’re bringing in the crew who made  _Space Ninja_.”

David looked torn between crossing his arms in front of his chest and flailing angrily, but he settled for gripping the front of his labcoat closed protectively with one hand and pointing at the door. “ _Get out_.”

“No, I really—”

“Out!”

“ _Fine_. Well, fine, then,” Piper said, looking legitimately offended as he left. Wally tried to follow after him, but David stopped him with a hand on his chest and pushed him back. 

“ _No_ , no, you need to stay here for a minute,” he said.

“ _Why_?” Wally asked, a little frantically. David turned to his left and started going through one of his cabinets and finally pulled out the flask with the V9 he had taken from Wally before. 

“I think this is what you came here for, right?” he asked. Wally grabbed for it, but David pulled it back, just beyond his reach. “Look, Wally. You’re smart. You’re ambitious. But coming here like this was really stupid and you could’ve saved yourself all this trouble if you had just waited two seconds after I dismissed the class so I could give it back to you. Next time you need something, just  _ask_  for it.”

“…Think I can come back some time and check out your lab?” Wally asked, far too soon. 

“Now, when you’ve just been caught red-handed breaking into my lab, is not the best time to ask for favors.”

“Can I come back next wee—?”

“I’ll sleep on it. Just get out,” David said impatiently. “And tell your partner-in-crime that  _Space Ninja_  sucked, and the only reason people liked it was because of the special effects.”

The look David gave him didn’t invite any further conversation. As Wally left the room, he found Piper standing outside the doorway with an affronted look and a noise of protest on his lips. 

“The fight choreography was  _amazing_ ,” he objected over Wally’s shoulder as he pushed Piper down the hall. 

“It’s all going to be  _CGI_!” David shouted back.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Wally hissed under his breath as he wrestled with Piper. 

“You wouldn’t understand. That was my  _childhood_ ,” Piper said to Wally. 

“I got what we needed, please let’s just go,” he said, and finally Piper raised his hands appeasingly and backed off. 

“The movie did kind of put all of its money in its special effects,” he conceded, shifting his weight and sidestepping Wally so they were walking side by side again. He did, however, cast another glance over his shoulder at David, who had left his office to watch the two of them walk down the hallway and back toward the elevators.

Once they reached the elevators, Wally slumped against the back, holding onto the railings and feeling weak in the knees. 

That was terrifying. And mortifying. 

“…So,” Piper said, joining him inside and smiling as the elevator doors closed. “… _Wally_. You’re a student here?”

Wally gave Piper an unamused, unblinking look. 

“Well, I guess it made sense. So much sense,” Piper scoffed, but then he froze, and his grin slowly faded from his face in a silent, thoughtful epiphany. “…How  _old_  are you?” he asked suddenly.

“That… that’s none of your business,” Wally stammered out, feeling suddenly self-conscious at the inquiry. The moment the elevator opened, he darted out, marching determinedly for the building exit, still cracked from Piper’s boot. 

“You know, with what I learned today I could figure out more about you if I wanted to,” Piper pointed out, jogging to catch up. “I mean, how many hot Indian guys named David work in Central U’s chemistry department? And then narrow it down to labs and lectures he teaches and look for anyone named  _Wally_. Bam. Found you, I can look you up, and figure out how old you are.”

“Will you just drop it?” Wally asked.

“What’re you, like, nineteen?” Piper asked, peering closely at Wally for any sort of reaction, and though Wally thought he’d done a good job in schooling his facial features, Piper’s eyes still widened in surprise. “Not even!  _Eighteen_? You’re  _legal_ , at least, right?”

“Yes!” he finally snapped, looking around outside to see if anyone were around to overhear their conversation. Then again, with Piper, they probably didn’t have to worry too much about being snuck up on by eavesdroppers in the quiet hallway. “And what’s it really matter?”

“Nothing. I just think it’d feel weird if we helped an illegal guy do illegal things.”

“What, so you’ll rob banks and rack up thousands of dollars in collateral damages with your teammates, but not if they’re underage? Really?” Wally asked. 

“If I recall correctly, you don’t really help out with that sort of stuff at all,” Piper pointed out. “But that’s beside the point. I was just curious.”

“Well, snap out of it,” Wally said. 

“Can’t help it. The less you let us know, the more curious we get. Don’t worry. I won’t tell the rest of the team. I think I like the idea of holding it over all of your heads,” Piper shrugged. He pulled out the cell phone from his pocket, checking the time. “We might still have some time to kill. We could always spend it dealing with whoever’s watching you.”

Wally immediately thought about how catastrophic that would be, introducing Piper to Zoom’s civilian identity. 

“ _Definitely_  not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of you haven't figured where David came from (or even if you have), I'd like to direct your attention [here](http://itsxandy.tumblr.com/post/42912850304/so-if-you-just-read-the-latest-chapter-of-the), where there's a bit of background information on that character in this story and a link to the canon character from the Flash comics. ...I don't care if you ignore the first link, but you need to check out the canon one, seriously. (Or, I guess, you don't NEED to, but I'm pimping out the Flash comics anyway.)
> 
> Oh, and if any of you guys read the comments, you might remember someone asking about [why he didn't just break into a lab](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/2181330). Told y'all I'd go into it.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to say that this ending was NOT on purpose. Also, I’ll have to go back and edit this a bit once I get to an actual computer because the one I am is a bit difficult to use.

His investigation of Wally’s job hadn’t gone very far, but Hunter hadn’t expected much in the way of results. There was no warrant from the police that he could take advantage of, and the Flash and Zoom weren’t really known for the investigative side of their work. Unlike certain members of their superhero community, they had the trust of the city they protected, and they didn’t risk that trust by spying on their citizens. 

With his powers, Hunter could snoop among the best of them with little risk of being detected. Still, there were certain moral guidelines Barry believed in, drawing lines in the sand Hunter wasn’t going to cross.

Which was just as well, because he had no talent for hacking or most of those other technical skills anyway. 

He doubted investigating Wally’s job with Chester Runk was going to lead anywhere. He’d hoped making an appearance would rattle things, provoke some action, but he’d come up dry. There hadn’t been any unusual activity since he had words with the man. 

He hadn’t expected much on that front anyway. The delivery business had been a hunch, but the most solid lead was still Wally. 

It had effectively been twenty-four hours since their ‘encounter’. Hunter already had a vague idea of what to do and say.

He was back at Barry’s, both of them tired, aching, and a little singed after Heat Wave decided to torch a bar. As Barry headed straight for a quick shower, Hunter made for Wally’s room, where Iris had claimed he’d gone to bed. 

He hadn’t. The lights were out, but his eyes immediately zeroed in on the empty bed and the unlocked window.

Well. He wasn’t going to find Wally here. 

He backed out of the room, only to hear someone clearing her throat.

Hunter spun on his heel to find a woman behind him, sitting in a wheelchair with a fixed, indecipherable expression on her face. Wally’s mother. 

“What were you doing?” she asked him in a piercing, no-nonsense tone. She didn't beat around the bush, a trait that her own son lacked. It was odd, in a disarming sort of way, that left Hunter feeling even more uncomfortable than he already would've been in her presence. 

“Uh... looking?” Hunter tried, pulling the door shut behind his back so she wouldn’t see the empty bed inside. He didn’t know why he was hiding this from his family. It wasn’t his responsibility to cover for Wally. He was the last person who ought to cover for him. “ _Checking_. I mean checking. On Wally. To see if he was still awake. He’s not.”

He could practically feel the judgment beating down against his face. 

Finally, his mother broke the silence and cleared her throat. “I need to get through,” she said, starting to sound a little amused. Hunter looked around and realized he was standing in her way in the hallway, and while she could  _probably_ squeeze past him, there was still the chance of her running over his foot with the wheelchair. 

“Oh, right,” he said. And for a minute, he considered going back into the room to make room for her to go around before deciding that was a dumb idea. Instead, he walked out of the hallway with Wally’s mom following behind him until they reached the living room. 

“I've got—or not,” she said as Hunter awkwardly helped her from the wheelchair to her couch. “You and Wally,” she said disapprovingly as they settled down.

The comparison threw Hunter off. “What?”

“People overcompensate when they're uncomfortable,” she said, pausing for a moment and then sinking into the cushions with a small, satisfied smile. “Hmmph. This is the most comfortable couch I’ve ever laid my eyes on.”

Hunter nodded and then turned to leave, but as he did, she spoke up again. 

“You’re Hunter, right?” she asked him. “Barry and Iris’s friend?”

“Yeah,” he said. 

“When Wally mentioned you, I thought you’d be someone a little older. You teach?”

“Teacher’s assistant, actually,” he corrected her. “I assist.”

“And work at the police department, I heard,” she said. “It sounds like interesting work.”

“Internship. It has its moments, but it’s mostly reading and filling in the blanks,” Hunter said, not sure if she was getting at something or just making casual conversation. “A lot of times, it’s kind of conjecture. We try to flesh out their backgrounds, determine why suspects do what they do, or what they will do.”

“Seems like you do a lot of work for someone your age,” she noted. He shrugged. It helped when you had the power to bend time. Even if it messed with his sense of good judgment sometimes, it did make the grunt work a lot easier. “Thank you.”

Hunter looked at her in confusion. “What?”

“For watching over Wally. I know, according to Wally, Iris probably asked you to do it. But thank you anyway,” she said. 

“But I haven’t done anything,” Hunter argued. 

“That’s not what I’m thanking you for,” she said. “I’m just happy he has someone.”

Hunter nodded and gave her a mumbled response before he left to go out and find Wally. As if he hadn’t already had enough mixed feelings about the whole situation. 

Dammit.

* * *

Hunter wasn’t in the mood to run around the city looking for Wally, but he didn’t feel like sticking around and just waiting for him to come back either. He’d never felt unwelcome at Barry’s before, but tonight he didn’t want to stick around any longer than he had to. Wally’s mom seemed nice enough; that didn’t make him feel any better about this entire situation because how could Wally even do something like this to his family? They were clearly concerned about him. They worried, and Hunter couldn’t imagine the fallout that would take place if he told them. 

Ideally, the mess could be avoided if he managed to convince Wally to straighten up his act now, rather than later. 

Hunter stuck to the neighborhood around Barry’s place, where Wally would inevitably return. Wally had left his window unlocked, which meant he definitely planned on coming by morning, before he went to school. Most likely, he wouldn’t spend the  _entire_  night out, but even if Wally stayed out until sun up, Hunter was used to late nights. He didn’t like them, but he functioned pretty well on little sleep. 

It took only fifteen minutes, real-time, for him to spot Wally upon his way back. They spotted each other at the same time, and Wally froze in midstep at the sight of him, a guilty expression on his face. He didn’t look sorry, but he definitely knew he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have. 

Hunter stood between Wally and Barry’s place, and he stood there, watching Wally to see if the redhead would try and avoid him—he’d fail, of course, because no one got away from Hunter on foot—or if he’d try and face his problems head on. 

He didn’t know what he expected. Maybe for Wally to try and run. The redhead seemed to know better, though. As anxious as he looked, he marched forward, resigned but resolute. He stopped when he was face to face with Hunter, arms crossed in front of his chest and eyes forming a glare as he expected the worst.

“Iris said you went to bed early,” Hunter said, to which Wally had no response. “We need to talk.”

“Okay,” Wally said, his quiet voice at odds with the intense stare. There was a faint flutter to his voice that betrayed his uncertainty. 

“But first, you’re going to empty your pockets,” Hunter said.  _That_  got a rise out of Wally.

The irritated body language and the ill-matched chilliness in his voice disappeared in lieu of a third, more startled response. The animation in this response seemed to suit Wally better. 

“What? Are you serious?” Wally asked, looking partly affronted, partly worried. “ _No_.”

“Holding onto something you shouldn’t?” he said testily. 

“Just a sense of personal boundaries,” Wally said defiantly. 

“Look, I will empty your pockets myself if I have to. I’m giving you the opportunity to do it willingly because if you make me do it for you, things might get a bit rough. Or weird. Very possibly both,” Hunter warned. There was only a flicker of hesitation in Wally’s expression, one that Hunter wasn’t used to seeing in the amount of time he’d known the redhead. But aside from that brief pause, Hunter knew Wally wasn’t going to back down.

Which was a pity, because neither was he.

Hunter reacted first—because  _hel-lo_  speedster abilities—darting forward to catch the back of Wally’s neck in the crook of his elbow. He only needed to hold Wally down in place until he gave in, but Wally managed to surprise him yet again, moving quickly enough to slip out of his grip. 

Wally was fast, he had to give him that, but it wasn’t enough. The redhead managed about three whole steps—three more steps than what most people would’ve gotten—before Hunter managed to spin around and yank him back by the hood of his jacket. 

Hunter wasn’t really the grappling type. He worked out enough to give him an edge against the average civilian, but when roughly one out of three metahuman criminals had their strength boosted in some kind of way, he never put too much stock in a style of combat that favored endurance, pure strength, and trust in the opponents inability to cave in one’s face in a single strike. Hunter’s greatest asset was in his mobility and precision.

But then again, it was just Wally. 

The redhead obviously didn’t spend too much time working the weights at the gym, and he definitely had about zero experience in a fight, fumbling awkwardly as Hunter wrapped a forearm around his neck from behind. 

“ _Hghk_!”

“Let me know when you give up,” Hunter said into Wally’s ear. Perhaps a bit too late.

It took him a second to realize Wally had almost immediately gone limp in his grasp for a reason. He let go, and Wally dropped forward, gasping for air. 

“You can’t hold your breath for  _two seconds_?” he demanded. He got a middle finger in response as Wally pulled his jacket off and tossed it on the ground. It tinkled with the sound of broken glass. During their struggle, something had cracked.

Wally leaned forward to try and pick at the corner of the jacket for a minute, but upon leaning forward, he had to take another moment to brace his hands against his knees and just breathe. 

As he sorted himself back out, Hunter stepped forward, kneeling down to inspect the fallen jacket. Little bits of glass clanged inside the pockets from which a few pieces had fallen out of. He nudged at a broken piece of glass with a finger. Some sort of vial, from the looks of it. Covered in coarse grains.

When he reached out to touch it, Wally lunged forward almost immediately, swatting Hunter’s hand away from the glass fragments. 

“Don’t touch that with your hands!” he chided, looking at Hunter as if he were the stupidest person in the world. “You don’t even know what it could do to you.”

“If it were dangerous, you shouldn’t be carrying it on you,” Hunter said irritably. “What the heck is it?”

“It’s...” Wally hesitated, apparently unsure of how much to tell Hunter. Eventually deciding that he’d been found out anyway, he sighed. “It’s Velocity 9. My last sample. Unless you still have—”

“No. I threw it out,” he lied immediately. He looked down at the shards. “V9 only comes in patch form,” he said, but after he said that, he wondered if maybe the team had been wrong. They didn’t actually know much about the drug. Only the ones they found had actually been in patch form. There could’ve been other derivatives. 

“Well, I extracted it from the patches. Purified it,” Wally said. “If you touch that... I don’t know, it could get in through your skin or something. Maybe.”

“What, you don’t know?” Hunter asked. 

“It’s what I’m trying to figure out!” Wally said defensively. 

“ _Why_?” Hunter asked. When Wally hesitated and looked away, he grabbed the redhead by the arm. “Is this what you’ve been doing with the drugs?” he demanded. A small part of him actually felt slightly relieved at the possibility. The situation was no less serious, but at least it was further proof he wasn’t using it himself. Probably. No, definitely. This was the second time that Wally refused to touch V9, worried that it would be absorbed through skin. He didn’t want it in his body. He was experimenting on it. “I want an  _answer_ , Wally.”

“It’s not your business,” Wally gritted. 

“Yes, it is. You worry your family. Your own  _mom_  came up to me and told me about how happy she was that I’m your friend. Believe me, nobody says that to me unless they’re really, really worried their kid is a giant antisocial freak.”

“My mom told you that?” Wally asked, sounding inexplicably wounded by the thought. 

“She said she was happy you had someone,” Hunter said. “Look, I don’t know why your family keeps tiptoeing around you, but it worries them, it stresses them out. They can’t even talk to you about it because it’ll make things uncomfortable. You know, if my family ever worried about me as much as yours do—”

Wally cut him off. “Well, they  _don’t_!” he finally said impatiently with enough venom in his voice to actually shock Hunter into silence. “It’s not your family, not your business.”

And that comment shouldn’t have stung as much as it did. It probably wouldn’t have, if it hadn’t been for the downright bitterness in Wally’s voice, and the subtle look of relief in the redhead’s eyes, as if he’d been waiting to say it all along. Catharsis. It made Hunter wonder just how long Wally’d been holding back this sentiment. The feeling that Hunter was too close to his family.

Territorial. Hunter recalled his earlier assessment. He’d been right on the target, but it didn’t make him feel much better.

Finally, he nodded, “Okay. You’re right. You,” Hunter motioned towards the jacket on the floor, “have no drugs left to do god knows what with, and you obviously don’t know how to get any more,” he added. It was a stab in the dark, but Wally’s glare narrowed in genuine irritation, proved his assumption true. “And you know what? You’re  _definitely_  not worth the headache. I don’t need to babysit your ass.”

“Something we can definitely agree on then,” Wally said tersely, focusing all his attention on picking the jacket up off the floor and shaking it out, littering the ground with little pieces of broken glass. 

“Yeah,” Hunter said as Wally started walking off. “Though your mom was wrong. You don’t  _really_  have anyone. And this here? This is exactly why.”

For a minute, Hunter thought he got a reaction out of Wally. He didn’t have a lot of friends. It made family all the more important to him, despite his inability to connect with them. Hunter could almost sympathize, except  _he_  had learned to manage. Wally looked back for a minute, finally making eye contact with Hunter, but in the end shook his head, refusing to rise to the bait.

“Well, I’ve gotten this far by myself,” Wally said eventually. “Guess I never really needed you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....Wow, happy Valentine's Day, you guys. ._. Know that I did NOT plan for this to happen, this week you were going to get only Hartley+David UST, sans the drama bomb bonus.


	9. Chapter 9

Hunter:  _Are you skipping my class?_  
Hunter:  _Are you SERIOUSLY going to skip my class?_  
Hunter:  _You’re determined to make this really freaking awkward aren’t you_  
Hunter:  _FINE_  
Hunter:  _Know what? See if I care_  
Hunter:  _Oh but you’re not here_  
Hunter:  _To see me not give a fuck_  
Hunter:  _Because I don’t_

“You keep looking at your phone,” Piper said. “Don’t. In fact—”

He plucked the cell phone from Wally’s fingertips. 

“Hey!”

“You shouldn’t even have your personal phone on you. Burner cell phones only,” Piper said. The two of them stood outside of a warehouse. “This is an easy job, but no need to take any risks.”

“If it’s an easy job, why’d you call me along?” Wally said irritably, running a circle around him and snatching his phone back from his grasp. That, at least, earned him an appreciative look and an approving nod. 

“Seeing as you’re the new kid and all, I felt it was my responsibility to guide you along the proper path of criminal-hood. Especially after you got stumped by an _electronic lock_. So we’red going to go through the basics. Today, we’re doing combination locks.” His tone left little room for argument, but Wally was good at finding space.

“I’ve already learned how to undo combination locks,” Wally said defensively. 

“On what, high school lockers?” Piper asked. When Wally didn’t answer, he let out an ungainly snort. “Are you serious?”

“Just forget it.”

“You are a  _child_ ,” he said incredulously. For an instant, Piper had that look on his face again. The stiff grin and uneasy eyes. The expression disappeared as quickly as it appeared and the older Rogue focused his attention on the building again. “We shouldn’t have any problems getting in or out. I’ll get us past the entrance, but you’re going to break into the safe.”

“What if I can’t?” Wally asked a little anxiously. 

“I’ll tell you if you can or can’t,” Piper said. “But if you can’t, I’ll handle that too. I’m just giving you a taste of what you’re eventually going to run into later down the road once you start working with the other guys.”

“Work with the others?” he echoed, confused. 

“What’s the point of being a Rogue if you’re always by yourself?” Piper asked. “One day, you’re going to get caught. Once you’re exposed, there’s no point in keeping you a secret anymore, right?”

“I’m not going to get caught,” Wally muttered determinedly under his breath. 

“We’ll see,” Piper replied all too serenely, and Wally had the suspicion that he was simply being humored. “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

Put like that, Wally wasn’t so sure now. He was rarely lucky.

He checked his phone one more time. No new text messages. Wally wasn’t sure who crossed the line first, but despite getting in the last, parting shot in their argument, he still felt as though Hunter had gotten the better of him. Then again, at the end of the day, Hunter was still the hero, Wally was still the nobody, and both of them were down one friend. Which put Wally back at naught and Hunter at, like, however many people were in the Justice League and stuff. 

Piper watched him but didn’t say anything as Wally tucked it into his pocket. He got a short nod for the action, which was all the encouragement Wally really needed. 

“I’m ready.”

* * *

He wasn’t.

Wally’s ears were still ringing but he could still hear Piper’s intermittent snorts as they rode to the bar. Once they reached the parking lot and Piper rolled to a stop, the older redhead took his helmet off, crossed his arms on top of the dashboard, buried his face in his forearms, and went right back to laughing. 

Annoyed, Wally punched Piper’s back and pushed himself off the back of Piper’s motorcycle, stomping into the bar. His ears burned, and his cheeks still felt warm, but that might’ve been from the embarrassment. He still wasn’t exactly sure what happened. Before walking in, Wally lifted up his hat a bit, running his fingers hastily through his hair before pushing it back down and walking in. 

“What’s got Piper all up in stitches?” Captain Boomerang asked with a confused looking scowl on his face.

“ _Nothing_ ,” Wally muttered. He glared at Piper, who had followed in after him, wiping the edge of his eye. “Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Piper said immediately with a forcibly straight face.

“What were you two up to?” Cold asked. 

“I was, well, I wanted to run the Kid through a few exercises, helping him get used to combination safes,” Piper explained. Wally slumped into a chair, arms crossed in front of him with a scowl. “So I set up a warehouse, put up some rudimentary security, and ran him through the basics. And, you know, he  _got_  it. But when he tries opening a safe, get this,  _it blows it up_.” And with that, Piper started cracking up again.

“It’s not funny, I could’ve died!” Wally shouted. “My head was pressed up right against that safe!”

“I  _swear_  it wasn’t me!” Piper insisted, though he wouldn’t stop laughing. He waved down a waitress. “Something for his head.”

“What kind of safe did you use?” the Top asked. “Did you put something flammable in it?”

“Just candy,” Piper said. “Which apparently makes the most fantastic explosion. I have  _no_  idea what happened, but it was amazing.”

“Next time you decide to pack Jawbreakers and C4 together,  _don’t_ ,” Wally muttered, finally giving up on life and laying his face flat on the table. 

“I didn’t, I  _swear_  I didn’t,” Piper said, and when the waitress came by and slid a mug of beer in Wally’s hand, he reached forward and took the drink for himself.

“Hey, that was mine,” Wally protested, tilting his head up at him.

“That’s not what I meant when I said ‘something for your head’,” Piper said. 

“I deserved that drink,” he argued. 

“Well, let’s see some ID first,  _Kid_ ,” Piper smirked, drinking his beer. Wally glared at him, not sure if this was Piper subtly making fun of the fact that he knew Wally was in school or if he was just being a general ass about Wally’s secretiveness.

“I will never forgive any of you,” Wally said into the table as Digger ordered a cup of juice for Wally, garnering a collective laughter from the rest of the Rogues. 

Eventually, the waitress came back with an honest-to-god juice box, a cleaning rag, and a cup of ice. Wally wrapped the ice in the rag, quietly hoping the material was cleaner than it looked, and held it against his head. The light bruises were already beginning to rapidly disappear, but it gave Wally something to do. He wasn’t sure why he was sticking around today. He never stayed at the bar any longer than he had to.

Well. His dawdling probably had a little something to do with home. He didn’t feel like going home to Barry’s place to sleep in Hunter’s bed. Aside from the fact that it felt a little weird now, he didn’t want to think about Hunter at all. 

Except now he was thinking about Hunter, even at the bar. Damn it.

“Hey,” Wally said. “Say you’re fighting someone physically stronger than you, and he puts you in a headlock... choke hold thing. What would you all do?”

“Tickle his balls,” Piper said immediately, causing Wally to choke on his straw. There seemed to be a mixed reaction among the Rogues, some of them looking at Piper with a  _‘what’_  expression, others laughing their asses off. “Legit advice, everyone!” he said, faking defensiveness. But then he turned to look at Wally to actually address the question. “But seriously, the actual trick is  _shock value_.”

“Don’t listen to him. Piper just likes to touch balls,” Digger snorted, and Piper glared at him. 

“ _Guys_ ,” Wally said irritably, not exactly liking where this conversation was leading. Piper sobered up. 

“Someone giving you problems, Kid?” he asked. 

“A while ago,” he said. A few days, technically, but it was vague enough to be held true. “Just want to know this for future reference.” Apparently, a little bit of oxygen deprivation goes along way when you’re a speedster.

“We don’t actually...” Piper glanced at the rest of the team present. “We all don’t really do a lot of punching and kicking when we can avoid it. That’s more of the Flash and Zoom’s thing.”

That, Wally knew. It was kind of the problem. 

“The important thing in a choke is probably to grab hold of an arm or a leg to keep a guy from squirming out of it,” the Top said. “You could keep your arms tucked in. If they can’t get a grip on your limbs, all they can really get a hold onto is your neck.”

“Which is kind of still a freaking huge problem,” Mirror Master pointed out.

“But you could still get leverage and twist your body so the pressure is off the front of your throat,” he explained. 

“I guess it is useful advice then,” Digger said. “So long as we’re, you know, you. Which we’re not. Thank god.”

“You know, you all can talk trash about me, but none of you guys can actually go toe-to-toe with the Flash,” the Top said, looking annoyed. 

“Unlike you, none of us really have to,” Cold shot back. 

From the traded insults and the slowly rising voices, Wally was pretty sure this was the rebirth of an old argument, and he wasn’t interested in waiting for them to back down from each other’s throats. Especially when it looked like things looked like they were about to get violent. 

“—shit leader who can’t even handle his own team, let alone his si—”

“What do you even do?” Wally asked loudly, cutting off the Top before he could go on a tirade that would dissolve the entire table into a brawl. From the looks of the patrons around them and the workers, who kept shooting their table anxious glances, he wasn’t the only one a little worried about having a fight on his hands. He wondered how often they broke out into a fight. 

At the Top’s loathing look, Wally shrugged. It probably sounded wrong, but his offhanded question seemed to have deflated the situation. Somewhat. Some of the other Rogues snorted at his comment, but Wally didn’t pursue the attention, waiting for Top’s answer. 

“I spin at high speeds,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster, but it didn’t stop the rest of the group from snickering.

Well. It did sound stupid.

“But how does that even help?” Wally wondered out loud, trying to imagine how it worked. “You can spin and spin, but if the Flash shows up and punches you in the face... oh! Rotational kinematics, everything hits you at an angle and glances off, right?”

“ _Exactly_!” the Top said. “He can come at me as fast as he wants, but if I spin fast enough to match his speed, he’ll never lay a solid punch on me.”

“But the Flash can break the sound barrier,” Wally argued. “If you spin at the same speed, shouldn’t you be brain-damaged?”

Not the best way to phrase it, apparently, from the Top’s annoyed look and the next wave of laughter from the rest of the Rogues. 

“The Top  _is_  brain-damaged,” Digger said. 

Wally rolled his eyes because, honestly, they  _all_  deserved a little humiliation. “The way you guys dress, I’m pretty sure you’re  _all_  are...”

“Says the guy who dresses like a complete tool,” Captain Cold said. 

“Personal preference!” Wally scoffed. “As opposed to you guys, with years of head injuries on your record. I’m surprised none of you are drooling vegetables...”


	10. Chapter 10

Wally didn’t stick around the bar too long. Even if he was playing hookie with Hunter’s class, he still had other classes to make an appearance at. His chemistry lecture was a cinch, though Wally spent the majority of the laboratory period ducking glances from David who, by the end of the period, was starting to look a little amused by Wally’s embarrassment. 

Forgiven or not, Wally was still going to wait a while longer before asking about his lab. 

“Wally,” he heard his name as he started packing up at the end of class.

He finally looked up to see David, who motioned for him to come over. Pulling his backpack over his shoulder, he walked over to David, a little anxiously. 

“Yeah?”

“Last week, when I caught you in my lab,” David said, his eyes skimming the room as other students left. “…Did you  _smash the door_?”

“ _No_?” Wally said, unconvincingly. David’s eyes narrowed, not in anger, but as if he couldn’t understand the answer he got, his mouth downturned. 

“ _Wally_.”

“I didn’t, I swear!” Wally said. “It definitely absolutely wasn’t me.”

“…Your friend then,” he guessed, right on the mark. 

“Uh…”

“God, you little delinquents…” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Who is he?” David finally asked.

“Are you going to tell?” Wally asked, a little desperately. “You don’t have to get him involved, I’ll pay for damages myself.”

“No, no, keep your money,” David sighed. “But tell your friend he can’t just go around vandalizing the school. We just _got_ this building.”

“You’re not going to tell anyone?” Wally asked cautiously, a little worried that his question might tip the scale and change his TA’s mind, but he had to know.

He shrugged. “The school’s already footed the bill; I don’t see any reason to make some kid pay for damages. …Even if it was his fault,” David said. 

“But… I’m just going to get away with it,” Wally said, to which David squinted at him in confusion. 

“Do you  _want_  me to tell on you?” he asked incredulously. 

“ _No_ ,” he said immediately. “No, I don’t. But…” Wally let out a frustrated sound, and David looked unsure as to whether he ought to be amused or confused or annoyed. They looked up and saw the next class of students come in.

“Excuse me, Al,” David said, nodding to the next chemistry TA. He turned to Wally. “Walk with me while you figure out what to say.” When Wally stared at him, he shook his head. “Or you can drop the subject entirely and just forget we ever had this conversation. Your choice,” he added.

David shrugged and walked off at a leisurely pace, just slow enough that Wally could easily catch up if he wanted to. After a beat, Wally hefted his backpack’s second strap over his other shoulder and jogged lightly until they were side by side again. 

“So I have this friend…” Wally started. 

“Okay.”

“He caught me with something I shouldn’t have had…”

David stopped in the middle of the hallway, throwing Wally a disbelieving look. “You are a little  _shit_ ,” he said, sounding almost breathless with disbelief. 

“I don’t mean to stir up trouble,” Wally said. “Usually, I’m in and out and there’s no trouble.”

“For the sake of plausible deniability, I think you should shut up,” David said immediately. “Right now.”

“What? Oh, I mean, I’m not doing things that are really illegal—”

“Other than breaking and entering, you mean,” he said. 

“Exactly! Well, uh…” Wally paused to rethink his answer before deciding that fact was undeniable anyway. “…Yeah, exactly. The thing is, no one ever gets hurt. And I could tell people what I’m doing, but even if it doesn’t look bad from nearly all angles, it’ll just make them worry.”

“What did you get caught doing?” he asked. 

“Experimenting with drugs,” Wally said. At David’s startled look, he backtracked. “Chemically! Experimenting chemically!” he said hastily. “I was running tests, trying to figure out the spatial arrangement of this drug that’s recently been on the streets that drastically increases metabolism. I wanted to try and see if it was a derivative of any known chemical, but now my friend thinks I’m doing drugs, and we got into an argument because I shouldn’t have had it in the first place, and we’re not talking anymore, and I don’t get why he hasn’t told on me.”

It took David a moment to process the rushed sentences, but after a beat, he nodded slowly. “So…”

“So  _why_  isn’t he telling on me?” Wally repeated himself. “He said trying to be my friend was too much effort. That means there’s no reason for him to keep this from my uncle. They’re  _actual_  friends, you see? I don’t get why he’s kept quiet, and it’s killing me.”

“I take it back,” David said mechanically, much to Wally’s confusion.

“What?”

“I am  _not_  equipped to help people with their personal problems.”

“What? No! Come on, please?” Wally asked, jogging a little faster to get ahead and walking backwards in front of David. “I won’t ask you for advice, I just want to know: why are  _you_  not telling on me?”

David stopped in the middle of the hallway, running a hand anxiously through his hair. “…I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t feel you deserve to be punished. I mean, you’re turning out to be an unexpected troublemaker, but you’re not destroying anything. Aside from breaking the door.”

“Which I didn’t do.”

“…Right. You’re not destroying anything  _maliciously_. So… there’s nothing stopping you from doing this again. Ratting you out wouldn’t do anything because you knew that you’d be facing certain consequences if you were caught. You knew the risks and decided to take the chance anyway. It was a calculated decision, which means the threat of punishment is nothing to you but an unpleasant byproduct. You wouldn’t learn anything.”

“I’m not dumb,” Wally argued. 

“Not saying you are,” David said placatingly. “But I am saying you don’t care. Not enough, anyway, and the fact that you’re standing here talking to me about all of this rather than your friend kind of proves it. And if I have to guess, I’d say your friend is hoping you’ll sort yourself out on your own because that is all that anyone can do for you.”

“Oh.” Wally scratched his chin, slowly taking the information in and feeling a little anxious at the assessment. “…Oh.”

“Yeah. So.” David shifted a little uncomfortably. “That’s why I’m not going to bother telling anyone.”

“…Because I’m a lost cause?”

“ _No_. No, more of a… more of a…  _delayed cause_ , actually,” he said delicately. “You just need work on prioritizing, And maybe a bit more conviction.” David motioned awkwardly with his hands. “Are you getting any of this?”

Priorities? Hah. Sure, running around Central as a thief wasn’t the best choice he’d ever made, but that wasn’t even causing him any problems right now. No, the good deeds were the ones that were fouling up his life. His investigation of V9 was what had gotten him into trouble. 

Priorities. As far as crooks went, Wally was pretty sure his were all right. 

“Yeah, I got it,” Wally finally said with a firm nod. 

David looked at Wally, looked as if he wanted to say something more, but he nodded in response, just as firmly as Wally. “Okay then. Good luck with your friend,” he said, maybe a little bit curtly, but Wally barely noticed, already turning away from David and heading down the hallway. 

All this talk of priorities reminded him. The Kid had work to do.

* * *

It was a dumb idea. It was a truly dumb idea, and Dick was glad his team wasn’t in on it so they couldn’t see it completely fail to take off, but he had to try it anyway. 

Admittedly, this wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had. It was nowhere near as dumb as the time he and Kaldur and Hunter went to Cadmus to investigate a facility they knew absolutely nothing about without anyone knowing where they had gone. But it felt dumb. There was no action, no initiative. He was just sitting around, lying in wait, not knowing if anyone was going to show up because there was a good chance the message hadn’t even been received. 

The Kid chose his targets randomly. While Hunter was struggling to filter out all possible targets and determine preferences or certain odd consistencies in the Kid’s habits, he knew it would take time. Any time anything went missing, it could be attributed to the Kid. It could be attributed to any other run-of-the-mill, low level thief. That made determining the victimology difficult: he didn’t have any particularly preferential targets so far. Geographical profiling was going to take time to process too. As a speedster, his range was nearly impossible to map. 

Criminal profiling worked best when fed solid information, but they didn’t have anything on the Kid beyond estimations of his activities. Profiling based on speculations left too much room for error. Of course, it wasn’t going to stop Hunter from trying. In fact, Dick was pretty sure that if anyone could wring out any solid information on the Kid based on suppositions of his criminal activities alone, it’d be him. 

But in the meantime, Dick wasn’t going to leave the burden on one teammate. Dick was the acting leader; he needed to find options that the rest of the team couldn’t. And in this case, this was something he’d prefer to do alone. 

His cape fluttered with a low rush of wind that swirled and circled the clearing. Eventually, the wind settled and appeared before him in the form of a thief wearing dress clothes and a fedora. He wore a mask and carried a second hat under his arm.

“You called?”

Though the Kid had inspected the area for any signs of traps, he still seemed on edge, ready to run off and disappear at the first sight of danger. 

“I wanted to talk,” Dick said, remaining vigilant but acting as casually as he could to avoid triggering the thief’s paranoia. 

“Yeah, I got your message,” the Kid said, holding up the extra hat he held under his arm. “A bit blatant, isn’t it, just leaving this up top a statue? How did you even know I’d see it?”

“I didn’t,” Dick said, not elaborating on how he’d spent the past several nights waiting here, eleven o’clock sharp, hoping the Kid would pass the monument on another one of his erratic paths and come. “You can keep the hat.”

“Nice,” the Kid nodded appreciatively, holding it up to inspect it. Dick froze, wondering if he would spot the hidden bug, but let out a silent sigh of relief when he missed it. “I’ve been thinking of widening my collection.” The Kid switched the one on his head out for Dick’s new hat in the blink of an eye. “I’ve been burning through my wardrobe lately anyway. It could use a bit more variety. So what was so important that you had to call me out on a school night, Rob?”

Possibly still in school, Dick noted. But then again, it was probably just a reference to Dick’s own age. “You’re a thief.”

“Ah. Yeah, I suppose you hadn’t realized that when we first met. I told you I was no hero,” the Kid said, almost regretfully. 

“You also told me you weren’t a scumbag either, but there’s some evidence pointing to the contrary,” Dick said. “And I’m not talking about theft.”

“…This is about the V9,” the Kid said, taking a long moment to analyze what Dick had told him. “It’s not me. I’m not the one doing it.”

“I know,” Dick said. “You might have superspeed, but you’re harmless. Still, I’m going to need more than that to clear your name.”

“Well, what do you want from me?” He sounded frustrated. 

“Well, any proof you have that you aren’t involved with it would be good, but at this point, anything at  _all_  would be helpful. The fact that you even know what V9 is means you have to have some information on it, right?”

“I don’t have any proof to clear me from this mess,” the Kid said. “The only reason I know what V9 is is because the Rogues asked me if I had anything to do with it, and I told them I didn’t. Beyond that, they’re not sharing much.”

“That’s it?”

“…East Grey. Something happened there, and I think it has to do with V9. I can’t say anymore,” the Kid said shiftily. He looked uncomfortable. 

“But you do know more,” Dick said, trying to press him for more information.

The Kid sighed, scratching the back of his neck. “I don’t… Why aren’t you trying to arrest me?” he asked suddenly.

“I have bigger priorities than chasing after you,” he answered, a little surprised by the change in subject, but the curiosity was understandable. “After all, there’s a killer drug in the process of being released to the public.”

“Good point,” the Kid said, looking away. “…I need a way to contact you.”

“What?” Dick asked, surprised by the sudden gesture. He couldn’t say he was familiar with the Kid and how he acted, but the offered hand seemed grossly out of character for someone who was becoming well-known for running away. 

“If I find anything more for you, I’ll need a way to find you, and I’m not running all the way to Gotham where you and Batman and all the crazies are. No offense.”

“None taken…” Dick said, realizing that the second bug in the hat might not be necessary anymore. The previous one didn’t have an accessible power source and ran out of battery weeks ago. This one was subtler, activated remotely and harder to detect because it only transmitted signals when activated. “But why are you helping me?” he asked.

The Kid shrugged and gave him a small smile. “Priorities.”


	11. Chapter 11

“A place to stay?” Piper repeated. 

“You know, a safe house? A hideout? Something a little out of the way,” Wally said. “Like the one you guys have. And don’t tell me that you don’t have one. I know you guys don’t spend all that time just sitting at the bar drinking eight hours a day every day. Your livers would’ve failed by now.”

Piper didn’t deny the existence of the Rogues’ secret clubhouse, especially considering the fact that Wally was standing in Piper's own personal hideout. Their hidey-hole was their business, and Wally didn’t care whether or not he was allowed in it. He just wanted one of his own.

“Hm... well, you’re right. I am the person to go to for this. A good one that people can’t trace back to you would probably take a few weeks to set up,” Piper mused aloud. His own place was lined with boxes and safes, all of which seemed to contained various toys and knickknacks, like noisemakers and hand-puppets. 

“A  _little_  out of the way is good enough,” he repeated lightly, going through Piper's belongings as if they were his own. “Sooner is better.” 

“Do you need it for anything in particular?” Piper asked suspiciously, plucking the air horn out of Wally's hands. 

“Yes,” Wally said, seeing absolutely no point in trying to lie. It didn’t mean he had to elaborate. He picked up and fiddled with a whistle that fit easily in his palm, only for Piper to confiscate that as well.

“I could always set up a few storage facilities under false names. Hardly the most secure, but it’s just a matter of arranging for a few aliases,” Piper said. 

“That's not too troublesome, is it?” he asked. Wally started going through the box again, but Piper finally lost his patience and pulled the box away from Wally, at the same time reaching out and giving him a small thump over his head. Wally recoiled as his hat fell down past his eyes. “Hey! _Jerk._ ”

“Don't mess with my things,” he chided. “Anyway, it’s mostly easy, just a matter of knowing who to go to for good forgeries and the right paperwork. Being the guy with all the connections, it wasn’t always my thing though.”

“How’d you end up with the job?” Wally asked.

“I was next best at it. The rest of the Rogues, their people-skills are a little, ah... you know,” Piper said, making a slightly painful sort of grimace.

“Nonexistent?” Wally tried. 

“Let’s just say they’re a little weak,” he said. “After the Trickster left, I had to pick up on the slack.”

“The Trickster?” he echoed, remembering the man from a few news reports and a Google search. The Rogue was famous for his flying shoes and yellow-striped pants. He couldn’t imagine that Rogue being much of a people person. Friendlier than the rest of the team, maybe, but streetwise? Hard to see. 

“Yeah. Former Rogue,” Piper said shortly, looking as if he regretted bringing the other Rogue up. Wally had never really known what happened to him. There weren’t any reports of his death. He just wasn’t ever around. “Anyway, since storage facilities are a kind of quick and dirty way of setting up a hideout on the fly, I don’t think they’re really as secure. Personally, I’d recommend setting up several of them. When you store your valuables away in them, keep them separate. If one gets taken out, you still have other resources left to spend and hide in.”

“Sounds perfect,” Wally said. 

“But before I set it up, I need you to do something for me,” he said. Anticipating Wally’s suspicions, he held his hands up placatingly. “Nothing major. And, personally, I  _have_  been doing you a lot of favors. This is the least you could do.”

“What is it?” Wally asked apprehensively. 

“O’Hannegan. He’s gotten quiet. I haven’t heard from or of him. Frankly, I’m a little concerned,” Piper said.

“Was he a friend of yours?”

“Hah,  _no_. God, no. But if someone’s offing my connections, that could be a problem, and if there’s something heading our way, it’d be good to know,” Piper said, patting himself down for a pen. After he found it, he grabbed Wally’s hand and wrote an address down on it. “I need you to run over to his place and check out what happened to him.” 

“You’re not coming?” Wally asked. 

“You don’t need me to hold your hand, do you?” he scoffed. “There’re too many people who know what I look like. You, on the other hand, are still an unknown. I guess the whole secret identity thing has its perks. Anyway, report to me what you can find out and avoid being seen. You don’t have to do anything beyond that.”

It seemed like a reasonable enough request, especially considering the fact that he had a stake in the Piper’s V9 investigation too. The address Piper gave him was different from the one where the two of them had first found the drug dealer, Wally realized, stopping in front of an apartment complex. It made sense that, if O’Hannegan was missing from his usual ‘place of work’, they ought to to check up on him at his home. 

Wally jogged lightly through the apartment complex until he found the unit number indicated on the palm of his hand. The door was secured with a simple deadbolt lock—something Wally could’ve handled easily, but as it turned out, he didn’t have to.

The door was already open, and the metal knob and the lock looked as if they had been melted away, even though the wooden part of the door bore no sign of scorch marks. 

Wally hesitated, but pulled out a pair of gloves from his pocket—latex ones that he gotten from his afternoon lab—and slipped them on before pushing the door open. Inside was a mess. Either O’Hannegan was an avid collector of ‘modern art’, or whatever had done to the doorknob had happened to the rest of his apartment. 

Wally made a cursory round through the rest of the apartment and found it in a mostly similar, empty state, though some rooms were cleaner. Unsure of how to proceed, he pulled out his phone as he absentmindedly rummaged through drawers, under beds, and behind furniture. 

“Piper,” he said when the Rogue picked up on the other end of the line.

“It’s only been a few minutes,” Piper said. “Running into a little trouble already?”

“I’m texting you a picture of O’Hannegan’s apartment. I’m not sure what happened here, but it looks like Magneto wasn’t into this guy’s interior design.”

“What?”

“Magneto. The big bad of X-Men comics, tv shows, and movies? One of many iconic Marvel characters?” Wally said. “Where’ve you been the past few years?”

“Hiding out as a fugitive, Kid. I’m not going to go walking into a movie theater,” he said.

“But it’s been out on DVD!” he exclaimed.

“So not the point,” Piper gritted. “Get to it, Kid.”

“Right. Anyway, did you get the picture yet?” Wally asked. “Because everything in the kitchen and living room is totally effed up. Lamps, ceiling fans, and the guy’s air conditioner... They’re all shaped funny. And I think there’s a bit of silverware and oven half melted on the floor.” He picked up one of them, mutated and twisted partially into a shapeless mass. Three prongs of a fork stuck out of it. 

There was a heavy silence on Piper’s end. As Wally waited for a response, he inspected the giant mass of metal on the floor by the open window. It was definitely the air conditioner. Within the crumpled metal were broken bits of plastic that were once the shutters. Looking around and finding nothing else to really do, Wally leaned into the window, pushing it down to shut it where there was once an air conditioner. 

It only took five seconds for Piper finally to respond. 

“Get out.”

The curt tone and the seriousness of Piper’s voice made Wally freeze. 

“What’s wrong?” Wally asked. 

“There’s a good chance you’ve caught the attention of a serial killer,” Piper said succinctly. Wally immediately straightened and backed up a step.

“Right,” he said quickly. “I’m outta—” 

He didn’t get out fast enough. As Wally turned around, something caught his leg and he fell forward into musty carpet, his cell phone falling out of his hand and just beyond his reach. He looked down and saw the former air conditioner had sprung to life, changing shape and wrapping itself around his ankles and slowly working its way up his legs. 

“Heeelp,” he hissed under his breath, but to no one in particular. There was really no one here to help him. As he looked up, a woman walked in. She wore a form-fitting costume as most other costumed vigilantes and criminals did, but the material looked as if it were made by a combination of different metal alloys, yet were thin and fluid enough to slide across her skin like normal fabric. Now  _that_  was a costume.

Wally couldn’t really spend too much time appreciating the metallic silvers and purples of her costume, not when he was pretty sure that this was probably the serial killer Piper mentioned. 

“Hi,” he said. The metal that wrapped around Wally began separating into thinner links of chain, and Wally was lifted up helplessly in the air with the tips of his toes hanging uselessly inches off the floor. His phone began to ring on the floor, and the woman jumped. The metal cords around Wally immediately tightened painfully around his abdomen. “Relax,” he choked out, hands scrabbling to try and loosen the links but succeeding in only getting them caught as well. “It’s just my phone.”

Slowly, they loosened. Barring her initial startle, woman showed no other reaction as she walked over and picked it up delicately between two fingers.

“...Can I answer that?” Wally asked after several rings. 

It looked like she was honestly considering the question for about two seconds before delivering a short, “No.” It was worth the try. She hung up on the call and dropped the phone onto the carpet before turning her attention back to Wally. “Who are you?” she asked in a cold, even voice. The metal trap tightened around Wally again, a little more gently than earlier but with greater deliberateness. “And if you’re not convincing, I’m squeezing until you’re split in half.”

There was a little extra squeeze to emphasize the warning. 

“I, uh...” Wally’s stammered response was interrupted by a soft, tinny chime. Both of them froze. 

“It’s not me,” he said, trying and failing to shrug. The woman made an annoyed face, and pulled out her own phone.

“Hello? Who is this?” she answered and, after a pause, she frowned. “Oh. What do  _you_  want?”

There was another pause as the person on the other end of the line, presumably Piper, spoke. She cast a glance at Wally. “You should’ve called earlier. He’s dead,” she said in a deadpan voice. 

“No, I’m not! I’m alive!” Wally said loudly. 

The woman glared at Wally and a sheet of metal covered his mouth, badly muffling his voice. “Fine,” she snapped into the phone, finally losing some of her composure. “Fine, I didn’t. But if I did, it would’ve been your fault. The agreement was that we’d be given updates on Rogue activities. This is not updated. This is you calling me when I was about one minute away from eviscerating your guy.”

“ _What_?” Wally yelped. 

She covered the speaker on her phone to muffle the sound and looked back at Wally for a second, “You were about to lie to me,” she said in a vindictive voice, and before Wally could protest that not even he had any idea of what he had been about to say, she turned her attention back to the phone call. “I don’t care for your excuses, Piper. Just tell me why you’re sending your people to sneak into  _our_  people’s homes, and you’ll get probie back here in one piece.”

There was a long stretch of silence.

“Fine,” she eventually snapped and promptly hung up on the call before the conversation could be drawn out any longer. She twisted her wrist, and all the metal binding Wally jumped away from him and landed in piles. “You’re free to go, Kid,” she said. 

“Who are you?” Wally asked, picking his phone up off the floor. 

At first, it looked like she was going to ignore him as she turned around to leave, but after a few steps, she turned to look back at him with an indecipherable stare before answering. “Magenta.”

“How did you do that?” Wally asked, pointing to the metal on the floor. “That was—watch out!”

He didn’t have time to finish the sentence as a dark figure sprinted into the room, but Magenta spun around to meet the new threat head-on. There was a heavy thud as fist struck metal, and Magenta let out a grunt, taking a step back to brace herself against the punch. 

“You pack a punch,” she gritted, sounding honestly a little impressed. The fabric of her costume began to change. The metal that had previously bound Wally rose from the floor, merging with the rest of her costume and thickening like armor. Wally could practically hear the smirk in her voice. “But, well,  _body armor_.”

Magenta struck back at her attacker, who dodged and ducked around her swings and out of reach. With strength disproportionate to her slight frame, one of her missed swings struck the wall, tearing through plaster and revealing a cracked layer of brick underneath. 

As the man darted around her strikes, Wally got a clearer view and recognized him and just how bad an idea it was to be suited in metal armor. “Stop!” Wally shouted, though he was a little too late in warning the woman to back off. 

It had taken only a single firm handhold around her forearm to take her down. A hand and a torrent of electricity. Wally rushed forward belatedly as she cried out and fell forward, catching her only by the cape to lessen her fall, but his priority was the man. He recognized the dark-skinned man with the light hair from before, should’ve recognized him earlier from the first time he ran into O’Hannegan. 

Without slowing down, he rushed ahead and managed to kick the other man solidly in the chest while he’d still been preoccupied with his previous opponent. The force was enough to send him flying backward and, coincidentally, out the window, which Wally took as an opportunity to run back and check on Magenta, who still lay on the ground, slightly twitching. 

Alive? Yes. Good enough. 

With that confirmed and his conscience relatively clear, Wally ran out the doorway, and nearly stumbled, realizing he’d run right out next to where the other man had fallen. Even though he’d recovered from his tumble through the window, it took him a moment to react to seeing Wally, who took a few steps backward with two fingers pulling the sides of his lips down to make a face at him. 

He turned around to see the man’s partner at the end of the walkway, an arrow notched in his bow and aimed directly at Wally. 

Oh. 

“Well, damn,” Wally said before running forward. He could probably jump off the railing and land in the courtyard below, but O’Hannegan’s complex was three stories up and Wally wasn’t about to risk the possibility of spraining his ankle when he hit the ground. 

As he barreled toward the stairs, which were incidentally behind the man, he managed to duck and sidestep the first three arrows. The fourth one, he realized at the last minute, was aimed at the ground before him. Not willing to risk running onto whatever trick arrow the man intended to use, Wally jumped as high as he could and ended up vaulting through the air. Somewhere along the way, his hasty hurdle turned into an accidental dive-tackle as he vaulted into the archer.

The world spiralled and twisted and kicked, and the next thing Wally knew, he was at the bottom of the staircase sprawled on top of the other man, who looked as dazed as Wally felt.

He could see the archer’s eyes widening at Wally’s position. He immediately reached back over his shoulder, hands scrabbling for one of the arrows that had fallen out of his quiver. Wally caught the tip of the arrow just before the other man could jab the tip into somewhere sensitive and exposed, and the arrowhead snapped off. For a moment, the man looked as if he were about to grab another arrow, but Wally grabbed at his bow, and he reacted instinctively, focusing his attention on the bow rather than the explosive and pointy objects littering the ground around them. 

The two of them tugged the bow back and forth between each other, and Wally refused to let go. Even though the focus wasn’t on the arrows anymore, the bow was still a legitimate threat, and Wally wasn’t going to be let himself get shot in the back the moment he turned tail and run. While Wally had better leverage, the archer was apparently a massive ball of muscle, and he found himself yanked down inches from the other man’s face. 

Piper’s playful advice echoed in Wally’s mind.  _Shock value_.

He closed the rest of the distance between their faces and kissed him. The grip on the bow loosened. Wally immediately pulled back, taking the bow with him. 

“Souvenir!” he declared, scrambling off of the archer’s chest with the bow raised above his head in one hand. He made it four steps before he turned back, bow lowered by his side as he recalled their last meeting. “You’re okay,” Wally added, tilting his hand back and forth.

The other man couldn’t even seem to pull himself together enough to actually respond as he continued to just stare at Wally, up at his partner, who was watching the scene play out from the top of the stairs, and then back at Wally again. 

And  _then_  he ran away.


	12. Chapter 12

Some time between meeting Magenta and fleeing from the two assailants, Piper had sent him a short text message. It was just an address, not much in the way of words, and no way to tell if Piper was mad at him or not for screwing this job up. He was supposed to be in and out without being seen, and it was supposed to be an easy task, but he still needed Piper to bail him out. 

Wally ran across through city until he found the address Piper had given him. He was standing outside, waiting for Wally in his civvies. 

“I messed up,” Wally said, slowly jogging to a stop. “I got caught—”

“You stick out. Lose the mask,” Piper said crisply, tapping his cheekbone. After a thought, Piper reached forward and took his hat too, placing it on his own head. Despite his casual actions, Wally could still sense the tension in the Rogue’s shoulders and a note of deliberate restraint in his voice. “Too old for you.”

Not sure if he was allowed to protest this, Wally mutely peeled the mask off his face. “Sorry about earlier,” he said. 

“I didn’t have the time to set up more, but I got a pretty good deal on this,” Piper said, showing Wally a key to his storage unit as he began to walk. Wally followed beside him and listened. “You’ll still be paying monthly, but I paid up front for the first month, so you’ll be paying me back. Here are your IDs. You should set up more safe-houses under different names; it’s never a good idea to keep all your eggs in one basket. And if I were you, I’d keep little emergency packages in the city, mostly hidden in plain sight. Your strength is in your mobility.”

They stopped in front of a storage unit with the number 106 etched above the entrance. Piper unlocked the roller shutters and pulled them up, motioning for Wally to come inside. The storage unit was a decent size. A little narrow, but he didn’t need much space anyway. As Piper lowered the shutters closed behind them, Wally awkwardly shifted from foot to foot. 

“I was seen,” he blurted out as soon as Piper turned around to face him. 

“I know, I know,” Piper said. “I ran damage control. Luckily, I foresaw this. I’ve been slowly spreading rumors about you. I can’t stop word from getting out, but tossing in extra gossip about you will keep people from figuring out what’s true or not. Credibility’s going to be a little shaky for people now. Magenta doesn’t know much about who you are or what you can do either.”

“Sorry,” Wally said. 

“Easy mistake. You did all right,” Piper said placatingly, though he still seemed as if he were on edge. “We never warned you about the other heavy hitters in this City.”

“I thought the Rogues owned the territory?” he asked. 

“We’re the big names, but we’re not the only ones in this city. Robbery’s our business. We find the goods. Magenta and her crew handle them,” Piper said. “But now that we know they’re somehow involved with V9, I think it’s time for us to back off the investigation.”

“What?  _Why_?” Wally said immediately. 

“If Magenta was at O’Hannegan’s place, she’s either looking into O’Hannegan’s disappearance, which could mean she’s backing V9, or she  _caused_  it, in which case we don’t want to be anywhere near her if they’re going to take out anyone associated with it.”

“So she’s dangerous?” Wally asked.

“We stay out of each others’ way. It’s best to lay low, just to avoid stepping on anyone’s toes,” Piper answered. Wally made a face. That was a giant pile of bullshit. Piper had to have known from the start that there was a bigger operation behind O’Hannegan’s V9 scheme. Noting Wally’s displeasure, he sighed. “It’s kind of a political thing. We don’t get involved with their side of the business, they don’t get involved with ours. Without this arrangement, we’d be having turf wars with  _everybody_ , and while I’m pretty sure we’d end up on top, we’d rather not have to fight tooth and nail for that position.”

“...Okay,” Wally said. Piper glanced at him suspiciously for his acquiescence but eventually dropped the subject.

“Sorry, Kid,” Piper said. “I know this was your only possible lead to your father, but this is as far as we can go. This isn’t something the Rogues can handle.”

* * *

“Magenta?” Robin asked. It had been a good hour after Piper had left when Wally finally considered it safe enough to leave a message for Robin. Lo and behold, the superhero had shown up shortly after asking Wally what information he’d managed to dig up. 

“I don’t know much beyond that and the fact that she has the ability to manipulate metal. It’s not perfect, though. She can manipulate metal, but her finer control is lacking. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some kind of crude form of magnetokinesis, but there’s not much I can tell beyond that,” Wally said. “She has something to do with V9, I know that much. She was at the apartment of a guy named O’Hannegan, who was selling the drugs. He’s disappeared. Either she’s trying to figure out who did it, or she was the one who did it.”

“This is good,” Robin nodded.

“O’Hannegan’s probably  _dead_ ,” Wally argued. 

“I meant your information. Your information is good,” he amended hastily. “It confirms one of our sources of information and adds details where the other eyewitness accounts were missing.”

“Uh... how much did those accounts tell you?” Wally asked, feeling a faint blush spread across his cheeks.

“Not much,” Robin said, watching Wally’s reactions carefully before finally cocking his head to the side slightly with a faint smirk on his face as he realized there had to be something more to his last adventure than recon. He hadn’t heard about the Kid making out with his attacker, but now Wally was beginning to worry that Robin, now aware that  _something_  had happened, would try to look into what had really happened. 

“Anyway,” Wally coughed. “This is where my side of the investigation halts. The Rogues don’t want anything to do with this, and my one guide to all of this business is backing out too. I think he’s worried he’s getting in too deep.”

“Can’t blame him,” Robin murmured before clearing his throat. “I’ll have my team look into O’Hannegan’s disappearance. And Zoom might have some information on Magenta. He knows more about the people in his city than I do, obviously. He likes to study the major players.”

“...What do you mean study them?”

“He keeps tabs on everybody. History, psych profiles, geographical profiles, and basically any bit of information he can find, in case there’s some detail in there that can help us predict what someone’s next move might be or where they’re hiding,” Robin said. “You should know he’s looking into you, by the way.”

“What?” Wally said. “What does he know?”

“Not sure just yet. He keeps it to himself until he’s finished his profile. Once he’s done, he’ll probably submit it to the League database. We won’t have your identity, but we’ll still have something on you,” Robin said. Noting Wally’s discomfort, he added, “As far as I can tell, there isn’t anything too specific on you just yet, though. You’re good for now. But my team is working on tracking you down.” 

“I’ll be sure to give them a good chase then,” Wally said confidently, but he couldn’t help feeling a little worried. “...If I’m caught, what would you do? And what would they do?”

“If you’re caught, my team is going to ID you. Facial identity, fingerprints, and DNA samples. It’ll be processed and recorded into the League database. Then you’ll be probably be handed off to the police, but since this is a more covert operation, there’s a good chance you’ll be kept for further questioning,” Robin said. 

Wally chewed on the tip of his tongue and then his lip as he contemplated the possible consequences. “...I don’t feel so good about this anymore.” 

“At best, I could maybe list you as a CI, and then the process would be a bit more lenient for you. If you’re caught, you’ll be IDed, but not arrested,” Robin said. 

“CI?” Wally echoed. 

“Criminal informant. You  _did_  provide some intel,” he said. “You’re not exactly an inside source though, so I can’t do much else on my end to lessen whatever happens if you’re caught. I’m not going to obstruct my own team’s investigation on you either. If they catch you, I can’t help you escape.”

“Fair enough,” Wally said. “I’ll just have to be extra careful around the Flash and Zoom then. I mean, no offense, but I don’t think most people on your team have much of a chance of keeping up with me.”

“The Flash and Zoom stand the highest chance of catching you, yeah,” Robin said, though Wally noticed the vigilante hadn’t directly addressed the latter part of his comment. 

Wally knew what times Barry worked, and while he and Hunter weren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment, he was pretty sure he could guess when Hunter was busiest during the day. His odds weren’t bad. 

“I think I can handle them.”

* * *

It was really only a matter of time before he had a brush with the law, but Wally hadn’t expected to run into the Flash. As it was, he didn’t know  _how_  the Flash had arrived almost immediately. Not when he had planned things so meticulously, timed it so that the heist took place during Hunter’s classes and Barry’s work. Which begged the question as to how they had arrived so quickly.

On a good job where no one even realized they’d been robbed, people usually took at least a minute or two to react, which was more than enough time for Wally to put a good amount of distance between them. Wally didn’t really know how he compared to the Flash and Zoom in terms of speed, but he had a _system_. Assuming that Wally was roughly as fast as they were, in the time it took the heroes to reach the scene of the crime, Wally could be anywhere within the radius they had covered.

They couldn’t have predicted the path he’d taken. He couldn’t believe it. 

Except he kind of had to, with the Flash on his tail and steadily closing the distance.

How could they have known where he’d been headed? They had to have known his target ahead of time and the escape route he’d chosen, and they couldn’t have found him by accident because he’d mapped his escape specifically to avoid running into them. 

Had he miscalculated? Had Barry taken an early lunch and been closer to the bank than Wally had planned?

Wally could spend more time contemplating where he’d made his mistake later. Right now, his legs were beginning to burn with exertion, and it was time to focus on emergency escapes. 

He saw the red sparks on the horizon ahead of him before he saw the yellow costume. Zoom was there to cut him off. Turning around corners wasn’t an option. When the Flash first started the pursuit, Wally had tried that earlier and nearly shat himself when it turned out the Flash was faster in turns than Wally and had managed to close the gap between them even faster. 

Wally ran forward, charging straight at Zoom like a game of chicken. If he was lucky, if his timing was right, he could pull this off...

Too soon, and Zoom would know what he was up to and run to meet him. Too late, and he could end up running right into him or missing the building. 

Wally changed angles, running diagonally across the street and over cars to reach the building on the other side, windshields cracking under the force of his footfalls. Zoom mirrored his path, weaving through traffic and cutting across the street to match Wally, but Wally reached the building first, his feet hitting the wall with enough speed to bring him up just inches above Zoom’s outstretched hand, which nearly managed to snag Wally’s ankle. 

As his path up the wall made an arc back down to the ground. Wally risked a split-second glance over his shoulder and bit down a frustrated scream as he watched Zoom literally just stop and do a one-eighty, managing to turn as if the law of conservation of linear momentum meant absolutely nothing to him. People couldn’t just stop in mid-sprint. Real people had to  _slow down_. 

Wally’s feet hit the sidewalk, but he didn’t stay there for long. He continued to run straight forward toward the corner of the next building, and he ran up the wall a second time, instead going straight up until he reached the rooftop and kept running, reaching the edge of this rooftop and using his momentum to jump across to the next roof. 

The Flash followed him up the building, but Wally had more or less managed to put a bit more distance between them. 

So he wasn’t used to scaling buildings. Wally made note of that.

As he began to reach the edge of the next building, this one slightly lower than the others, Wally began to stoop and slow down slightly. He hit the raised concrete sides and instead of trying to make it to the next building, he instead hopped over the edge and dropped straight down.

His knees felt shaky from the landing. Above his head, he saw the Flash jump to the next building overhead, unable to stop himself in time. He bought himself a few more seconds. Wally ran inside the building he had dropped down from, past the restaurant’s surprised customers and workers and through the kitchen.

He left through the back exit, where the cooks took out their trash. On the other side of the dumpster, several feet away from the rest of the trash, Wally dropped the messenger bag with the stolen goods inside by his feet. He didn’t bother unknotting the trash bag, instead ripping a hole into it and pulling out a backpack. He took out the clothes and replaced it with the money. 

Wally hastily loosened the tie around his neck and started unbuttoning his shirt, hands shaking from the adrenaline. Seconds to go before—

“A bank robbery, vandalism of cars,  _and_  public indecency? Really?”

Oh. 

The next thing Wally knew, his head was ringing, the world was spinning, and he was on laying the ground with Zoom glaring down at him through the dark, tinted eyes of his costume. Wally had been struck from behind and fallen, but he recovered almost immediately, backing away from Zoom and pushing him away. 

Surprisingly, Zoom relented. Judging from the harsh breaths, he was exhausted as Wally. Maybe even more so, if he’d been following behind on foot while Wally had been roof hopping. Wally bit back his exhaustion and felt at least a little pleased that he wasn’t the only one out of it. 

“Took you long enough,” he said to Zoom shakily, and that was all the break Wally got as Zoom resumed the attack. 

He was on Wally in an instant. Even with Wally’s heart racing and adrenaline pumping and entire world moving in slow motion, Zoom was still way too fast, so unnaturally fast. Wally could only wince and take a step back, because at that speed, his arms weren’t going to reach up and cover his face in time and this was going to  _hurt_.

Zoom drew his fist back as he came in close— _overkill, overkill!_  Wally wanted to protest because there was no way his ribs would come out of this intact at that kind of speed.

Wally was struck with bruising force and rocked back on his heels before falling backward, leaning against the brick wall behind him. His ribs were aching, but the pain was nothing compared to the surprise.

Zoom had not, in fact, punched a hole clean through his rib cage.

“Well,” Wally said, a little breathless from the hit. “That wasn’t too bad.”

He rushed forward. Wally didn’t know how to fight, but luckily, he didn’t need to win one. He kicked Zoom in the knee with a resounding crack and ran for it. As Zoom shouted in pain, Wally darted to the side and grabbed his things, but when he found that Zoom wasn’t on his tail, he slowed down at the end of the block, turning around to risk a look. 

Zoom was on all fours, but he hadn’t gotten back up. 

“Are you... okay?” he asked, returning to the alleyway to slowly approach approach Zoom, one step at a time, as he might a wild animal. 

“I’m ggggoing toooo kickkk your asssss,” Zoom said, dragging himself over to and up against the wall. 

Wally took a step back, unnerved by the sight of the jagged red lines and sparks radiating around him, the venomous glare, and the strange distortion in Zoom’s voice. No, not just Zoom’s voice, Wally realized. The sound of passing cars fluctuated between normal and unnaturally drawn out.

In the time it took for Wally to lift his foot and place it back down, Zoom had flickered twice and appeared before him, his movement too fast for Wally to see even with his own superspeed. Wally fell backward as Zoom stumbled into him, fists pounding against Wally’s arms, raised to protect his face. The heavy thuds hurt, but it lacked the force it previously had. 

Wally pushed Zoom off, shoving him away to the side and scrambled back up to his feet, backing away warily. He nearly ran a second time, but he froze again, noticing the angle of Zoom’s leg and recalling the crack under his foot as he kicked Zoom only seconds ago.

God.

He couldn’t move his legs, rooted to the ground. He wanted to run. Away from Zoom. To Zoom. It was an  _accident_ , and he only wanted to escape, not... 

“I didn’t... That was an...” Wally stammered out as Zoom continued to gracelessly scrambled upright again, despite the uselessness of his leg. He didn’t understand why Zoom tried again to reach Wally when his leg wasn’t even pointed in the right direction anymore, but he took a step forward and fell, his leg collapsed under him at its unnatural angle.

Wally lunged forward to try and catch him, but recoiled at the outstretched arm as Zoom tried to grab him again. And he backed away even more quickly at the sight of the Flash, just arriving at the end of the alleyway. He backed up, picking up speed as the Flash arrived and knelt beside Zoom. 

“No, nnnnot me, hhhhhe’s righttttt there!” Zoom said, waving an arm in Wally’s direction. At that, Wally turned to run. 

“You need medical attention,” the Flash said in a cool, if slightly shaken, voice. “We’ll find the Kid some other time.”

“ _No, we wwwwon’t...!_ ” Even with his voice distorted, Wally could sense the frustration in Zoom’s voice—in  _Hunter’s_  voice. 

Even across the city, he couldn’t shake off the sound of Hunter’s voice, how furious he’d been lately, how he’d screamed at the top of his lungs when Wally had  _kneecapped_  him. 

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.


	13. Chapter 13

Barry didn’t deserve the silent treatment. It had been a judgment call and a matter of priorities, but even though Hunter could appreciate the fact that his own personal well-being ranked above capturing a criminal, he couldn’t help the swell of bitterness in his throat. He owed Barry his gratitude, but it was painfully hard to give when he’d spent so many nights studying the Kid’s work. Weeks, technically for Hunter, with the liberal use of his powers.

His bad mood must’ve shown. After taking him to Mount Justice for treatment, Barry had kept his distance, probably realizing Hunter needed a moment to cool off. 

Hunter’s leg throbbed. Dr. Mid-Nite had left him with bottle of water and pain medication beside the infirmary bed, which Hunter’d ignored for the most part so far. With a quiet sigh, he reached over and took one of the pills with the cup of water. 

He fiddled with his glove, flipping the latch and pulling it open. It wasn’t special, or anything like Robin’s glove. He had a taser equipped in his own gloves once, but that was the most high tech it had ever been. Almost as soon as it had been installed, he’d had it removed. He didn’t need much anymore as Zoom. 

Except for the timepiece. The sound coming from it was distorted, unnaturally stretched out like static. He sat quietly, eyes closed as he listened to the static, and slowly the sound started to condense into distinct ticks. Once time began to return to its usual state of flow, Hunter felt the pressure in the back of his head begin to ease off and the pain in his leg intensify. 

“What happened?” 

Hunter opened one eye, and found the source of the subdued voice. 

“How long’ve you been there?” he asked Robin, who shrugged in response.

“Maybe a minute. Wanted to let you… gather your thoughts,” Robin said, for lack of a better term. Hunter had had these abilities for years, and still no one really knew what to make of them. There weren’t too many experts on “temporal anomalies” that had the League’s trust. “Garth’s outside.”

“What?  _Why_?” Hunter asked.

“I’m pretty sure he thinks you don’t like him,” he replied with a slight smirk that, for some reason, came off looking a little grim. 

“…Just let him in,” he said moodily, and Robin obliged, opening the door and sticking his head out. 

“Garth, get in—oh, hey, guys,” Hunter heard Robin say out in the hallway. He dipped back inside, sticking his head in the door. “Incoming.”

“Are you all just standing outside the door?” Hunter said loudly so his voice would carry. 

“Wanted to keep Garth company,” Artemis said, striding into the room, While Conner, M’gann, Garth, and Robin’s presences weren’t all too surprising, he didn’t expect to have the entire team walking in. “Did you make him sit outside?”

“ _No_ ,” he said grouchily. “I  _didn’t_. And what are you guys doing here?”

“What, we can’t visit a friend after he’s had surgery?” Raquel scoffed. 

“I didn’t get an invite when you got your wisdom teeth pulled out,” he said. 

“Getting my wisdom teeth removed didn’t require hours of surgery,” she told him. “If it hadn’t been for the League’s technology and Dr. Mid-Nite, your leg could’ve been ruined.”

“It still might be,” Conner spoke up seriously. “It’s too soon to tell whether or not there’s going to be any permanent damage. Your tibia was almost completely separated from your femur.”

Hunter slouched into the bed as best he could without jostling his own leg, admittedly a little unnerved by the idea of permanent injury. “Well, I could always quit and become a secretary,” he joked weakly. “Robin, I know you’re secretly loaded. You’d hire me, right? I make good coffee.”

“You make terrible coffee,” Artemis interjected. “You’re lucky you’ve got your looks.”

“Hey, I can type, like, ten thousand words per minute, that’s  _got_  to count for something,” he said. 

“Well, before you start making plans to abandon us to fulfill your life’s dream, we need to sort some things out,” Robin said. “I had to remove you from the team roster since, obviously, you’re not going to be doing any missions for a while, I hope you don’t mind. There’s always going to be other tasks you can help out with, just no field work—”

“Garth’s training needs to be rescheduled, too,” Hunter squeezed in. “Someone has to take over for me.”

“I could pick up where you left off,” Artemis offered easily. 

“Actually, I nominate…” Hunter scanned the rest of the group. “… _anyone_  else, actually. Anyone?”

“Hunter, there is no one in this room more suited to training Garth than I am,” Artemis said. She was right. Raquel, Karen, and M’gann mostly fought at a distance and weren’t as adept at hand-to-hand combat. With their arsenal of powers and tricks, they never really needed it. They faced the same problem with Conner who, even though he was good at physical combat himself, wasn’t suited to training someone who didn’t have the same strength he did. And even if Garth had miraculously managed to gain a sense of coordination overnight, Hunter doubted he’d ever be able to learn from Robin’s fighting style.

“Be that as it may, I am still requesting split custody,” a familiar voice said, and Hunter looked away from the group to see Kaldur walking in through the doorway. “I heard from the Flash that you had a run-in with the Kid that ended poorly.”

And with that comment, Hunter’s mood soured again, reminded of all the wasted work that went into the set up and embarrassed that Kaldur was seeing him like this.

“I literally almost had him in my hands, that’s how close the Flash and I were to having him,” Hunter said. “And then he  _kneecapped_  me.”

Robin winced. “How did you manage to get him?” he asked. “The Kid is always gone by the time you arrive.”

“It wasn’t easy,” Hunter sighed. “I found a pattern to how he works. At first glance, you’d think he’s choosing his targets randomly, but he’s not. There are certain areas he avoids—mostly places that the Rogues prefer. He works separately from his team. There are a lot of subtle patterns…” Hunter paused, not sure whether he ought to go into some of them. One of the patterns he found… It was better to wait until he had more information. “Basically, one of the most important patterns is that once he strikes in one area, he’s likely to avoid it the next time. “It’s not actually random. It was just a matter of determining where he last hit.”

“How do you even see patterns that vague?” Robin asked, looking surprised. 

“…A  _lot_  of time and effort,” Hunter said flatly.  _So_  much time and effort. He wanted to just lay down and stop moving, talking, and thinking. Then again, with his leg, there’d probably be plenty of that coming up. “Now that he was almost caught, he’s probably paranoid enough to watch where more carefully where he goes. It could take weeks or even months for me to find a new pattern.”

“…We don’t need to wait for a pattern.”

Hunter looked up at Robin in confusion. “What?” 

“There’s a facility called H&G Self-Storage on 1901 Wells Street. That’s where the Kid’s recently set himself up.”

“How do you know that?” 

“I’ve met him.”

“ _What_? You were  _there_?”

Betrayal wasn’t a feeling Hunter was accustomed too. It was a feeling that required trust, and Hunter didn’t share enough of himself to do that very easily. Robin was one of his oldest friends, and the only one of them he still saw on a regular basis. 

The room had more or less gone completely silent, everyone waiting for their leader to tell them why he’d let the criminal they were chasing after get away. By now the team had more or less learned from past mistakes that it was better to try and avoid jumping to conclusions, and Hunter waited with all the patience he could muster because the first thing something like this happened, he had given Kaldur the benefit of the doubt, and Robin deserved the same kind allegiance. 

“I met him before we were assigned to his case. Before we even knew who he was. He tried to help me with Red X. He helped people after the Weather Wizard tore down that neighborhood,” Robin said quietly. So far, so good. From Robin’s perspective at that time, there hadn’t any reason to arrest him so far.

“So how’d you get the address then?”

“That came after the assignment,” Robin admitted, and Hunter closed his eyes, not sure whether to feel pained or furious. “I wanted to give the Kid a chance to explain himself.”

“And did he?”

“No,” Robin said, but at the near-collective groan, he held up his hands. “ _But_! But only because he doesn’t seem to be involved in the drug.”

“And you just trusted him?” Hunter said disbelievingly. 

“Yes!” Robin said immediately, and then he backtracked. “Well. No. But that’s beside the point. Aside from the coincidence of them having appeared at the same time, there’s no actual evidence that there’s any relation between the Kid and the drug.”

“That’s what we’re trying to do,” Hunter said. “ _Collect evidence and question suspects_.”

“Well, he’s given me a suspect. The Kid gave me information,” Robin said, sounding almost desperate to be understood. He turned to Kaldur. “When you and Roy were looking into O’Hannegan’s disappearance, they ran into the Kid and one other person. He doesn’t know if she was looking into it or if she had caused it, but he managed identified her. Her name is Magenta. It’s not much, and he can’t tell us any more. The person he’s working with won’t allow him to get any closer to the V9 case.”

“That’s not much to work on,” Hunter said. “But the name… I know Magenta. Usually wears armor. Literally. Like a knight.”

“The woman was wearing armor, but it was more of a body suit that was made of metal rather than a suit of armor,” Kaldur spoke up.

“I don’t understand the difference,” Garth said.

“It’s a matter of time periods,” Kaldur explained. “Humans once wore heavy armor to battle. Their attire has slowly been using fewer and fewer material.”

“Won’t they eventually run out?”

“Yes.”

“We can talk about fashion later,” Hunter interrupted. “Magenta works the bodyguard and enforcer of a woman named Amunet Black, the suspected head of a criminal organization. I’m eighty percent sure she’s also a contract killer.”

“That explains why the Kid wouldn’t get any closer to the case,” Robin said. 

“Okay, you know what? What is it with you and your fixation on this  _Kid_?” Hunter asked. 

“I’m not  _fixated_ ,” Robin said. 

“Um.” Raquel glanced between them, most of the team beginning to look incredibly uncomfortable as well.

“Our assignment was to catch the Kid, not collaborate with him—” 

“He wasn’t involved with V9,” Robin defended himself.

“He’s still a thief. An extremely  _active_  thief in  _my_  city. You had an opportunity to stop him, and you just let him loose!” Hunter said. “You know what you do when you catch a criminal? You turn him in. It’s our  _job_.”

“We’re just going to…” Artemis motioned toward the door but was mostly ignored by Hunter and Robin. “Bye.”

As she and Kaldur ushered everyone out of the room, Kaldur paused by the doorway, looking hesitant to leave, before stepping out. 

“Not all of our jobs are as straightforward as yours,” Robin said. “Things are _complicated_.”

“No. It’s. Simple. You catch the bad guys. You don’t put them before your own friends!” 

“I’ve  _never_  put the Kid before any of you!” Robin said, finally losing his cool, but he almost immediately drew back with forced calmness again. “You don’t understand. The Kid is a… delicate situation.”

The way he anxiously shifted his weight from foot to foot, hesitant to elaborate, caught Hunter’s attention. 

“Is it because he knows my secret identity?” Hunter finally asked. Robin looked up in surprise, dumbfounded. 

“You know?”

So he was right.

“It was suspicious,” Hunter told him. “The placement of his crimes. It wasn’t just arranged around the other Rogues. The locations, the timing… He’s always situated far away from my campus while I’m teaching, from the police department when Barry was at work, from Barry’s home at night… The pattern wasn’t definitive, so I couldn’t say for sure, but… Maybe we could work with this. Anyone who’s ever interacted with both me and Barry—”

“I don’t think that would work. There’s no way of telling whether the Kid actually met you in your civilian identities, or if he met just one of you and tailed you until he saw the other. He might not even have met you in person at all,” Robin said. “Plus… he knows  _my_  identity.”

Hunter was dumbfounded. He was one of Robin’s oldest friends in this business, and not even he was privy to that information. He was almost jealous, except he doubted Robin had given it away at will. 

“I’m sorry about your leg,” Robin continued. “But I didn’t think you’d understand. I thought you might go after him anyway.”

“You thought right,” Hunter said. 

Robin looked a little surprised. “But if he knows who you are.”

“I’m not completely convinced. I still think the Kid has something to do with the V9,” Hunter said firmly.

“But we’d still need to treat him carefully until we figure out what else he knows and how he knows it,” Robin said. 

“Carefully, yes. But… I can’t give him a free pass,” Hunter said, his throat growing tight. 

“Did he… do something else?” Robin asked cautiously, looking confused by Hunter’s reaction. 

Hunter thought of Wally, that idiot. He’d told Wally that he was wiping his hands clean of him. He’d told  _himself_  that, too. But he couldn’t just let it go. Not when he looked Barry in the eyes every day and kept this secret from him. Hunter wasn’t even sure why. He owed Barry a lot more than he did Wally. He didn’t owe Wally  _anything_ , not his help, not his loyalty. And he was beginning to suspect that Wally had never wanted his loyalty in the first place.

The lack of appreciation bothered him more than it should have. 

“Not directly,” Hunter admitted. “I found Wally with V9.”

“Wait,  _what_? As in Wally West, the Flash’s nephew?” Robin sputtered. 

“Do I know any other Wally?” Hunter asked crossly. “It’s like… every time I think about Wally, I’m reminded of the Kid. And every time I think of the Kid, I’m just reminded of how much trouble he’s caused.”

There was a pause before Robin spoke up again. “Sorry I let him go,” he finally said. 

“We can still get him,” Hunter insisted. “If you think that’s what we should do.”

Robin smiled thinly. “Are you actually saying that if I choose not to go after the Kid, the team, including you, will go along with it?” he asked. “I can’t imagine Batman liking that.”

Hunter hid a cringe. “Well,” he said. “Batman handed the reins over to you. It should be your call.”

Robin looked torn. Personally, Hunter didn’t envy him. Not that he was even the least bit merciful towards the Kid, but he didn’t have to try and determine the tactical advantages of his every action. Hunter just didn’t have the mind for leadership. 

Robin looked down at Hunter’s leg and shook his head. “No. This is where I have to draw the line,” he said firmly. “We’re going after the Kid.”

Hunter let out a heavy, relieved sigh, not even bothering to hide the exasperated relief behind it. It was Robin, after all.

“If the damage is permanent…” Robin continued, a little more hesitantly. 

“Then I’ll walk with a limp and still probably be the second fastest person in the world,” Hunter cut him off. Actually, he was pretty sure there was no way he’d take being crippled so well, but there was no point in wrenching the knife in deeper when Robin was already clearly beating himself up over the consequences of his actions. 

“I’m still sorry,” he said, as if Hunter didn’t already know that. 

“Just catch the Kid for me,” Hunter said dismissively. 

Robin hesitated but nodded before leaving. “Well. I can’t stay long, and I’m pretty sure Kaldur still wants to talk to you.”

Hunter leaned his head back and made an annoyed face at the ceiling. 

“You shouldn’t avoid him,” Robin said. 

“I’m not avoiding him,” Hunter said flatly. 

“Not on that leg, you’re not.”

“Too soon, Rob.” 

“Sorry.”

“Go away,” Hunter waved him out with a thin-lipped smile just in case Robin might interpret it as actual irritation. Well, he  _was_  irritated, but no point in making a big deal out of it. 

Outside the door, Robin motion back toward the room at Hunter. At the cue, Kaldur walked in through the doorway. Hunter immediately straightened his posture and swapped his irritation for attentiveness.

“Hunter,” Kaldur said. “I was hoping to speak to you alone.”

And Hunter was hoping he wouldn’t. “Why?” he asked curtly. 

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said. 

“No, I  _haven’t_ ,” Hunter muttered. 

“Roy and I have been in Central for—”

“A week? Two?” Hunter said. “I’m busy, Kaldur. Between going to my classes, my work, my internship, patrolling the city, and working covert ops around the world, I don’t really have time to track you down and hit you up. You and Roy don’t even have too—wait, how is Roy even here anyway? What happened to college?”

“He commutes.”

Hunter resisted the urge to complain about the use of League technology when neither of them were even associated with the League anymore. Kaldur interpreted his silence, however, and closed his eyes, pulling up one of seats in the room to sit beside him. 

“You are upset with me.”

“ _No_ ,” Hunter said immediately before relenting just a little bit. “Okay, maybe a little. You left the team without any sort of warning. Even  _Batman_  felt bad for us. We were doing  _that_  badly.”

“Batman is just a man, with the same thoughts and emotions as you and me,” Kaldur chided. 

“Says  _you_ ,” Hunter snorted. “We were just lucky that Rob got put back on the team to replace you. We had no leader. Karen was good, but she didn’t have the experience—and leaving me in charge of showing her the ropes was a _monumentally_  bad idea, by the way.” He had a strong preference for simple solutions, which made him a decent second opinion, but he was far from a good leader and not much better at giving guidance to another either. Kaldur’s faith in him had been optimistic but misplaced.

“I’m sorry,” Kaldur said, and Hunter hated it. He had long since accepted that literally he had about zero leadership skills, often unable to separate what was right from what was necessary, and he didn’t appreciate Kaldur feeling sorry for _his_  personality. “I thought you could handle things without me.”

“Well, now you know: I couldn’t!” Hunter said angrily before stopping himself and backtracking. “I… Look, it’s not… Okay, embarrassing levels of codependence aside, without you, we nearly lost the team.”

“Roy needed me,” Kaldur said quietly.

“I know,” he sighed. “I know he did. And compared to Roy doing crack and meth and acid and taking potshots at civilians—”

“That is not how it happened,” Kaldur said sternly.

“ _Fine_. Compared to Roy’s ‘ _issues_ ’ with his mission operation,” Hunter relented, using air quotes, “my personal problems don’t really register, and the team has always managed to pull itself back together. With or without you, apparently. Roy needed you more than we did.”

“Perhaps, but looking back, I wonder if I shouldn’t have left so abruptly,” he said.

“No, abrupt was good. Abrupt was what Roy needed. My issues with my girlfriend didn’t put anyone’s lives at risk. Roy, on the other hand, had a  _lot_  of lives on the line,” Hunter reasoned, but amended his statement at Kaldur’s disapproving look. “And his own, of course. The point is, you needed to act fast, so you did, and I can’t fault you for that. You really could’ve called once in a while though, let everyone know how you’re doing. Don’t try to stop me from blaming Roy, though. That idiot should’ve known when to call for help instead of waiting for us to realize he needed it.”

Kaldur didn’t say anything for a moment, obviously slightly uncomfortable with Roy and Hunter being at odds with each other. “How are you and Ashley, by the way? It’s been how many years since you’ve been together?”

“Four since we started dating, almost one since we broke up,” Hunter said. Kaldur’s eyes widened at the news of the latter. “Like I said, you could’ve called once in a while.”

His face dropped in guilt. “I am sorry to hear that. Did she—?”

“I broke it off. Things weren’t working out,” Hunter said. “What about you?”

“Roy and I are dating,” Kaldur said. “Which is actually why I wanted to speak to you.”

“Oh.” It wasn’t really like getting hit with a hammer. It was more like a mallet against a gong—and, okay, maybe a  _little_  bit of hammer—when Kaldur’s words actually registered. “ _Oh_. Wait, did you think I was going to be weird over it? Have some faith in me, I’m not an asshole. Not that kind, anyway,” he said. A neat, vague sidestep, if Kaldur was going to try and address what Hunter thought he was going to address, but true regardless of what Kaldur was thinking. 

It wasn’t his business who Kaldur was into, and Hunter wasn’t going to let himself be upset by the news. Even if it was Roy. Okay, he could be a little bit upset. 

“But  _Roy_? Really?” he said. 

“He has his good side,” Kaldur said. “As you should know. The three of us were friends. We could still go back to the way things used to.”

“Kaldur, I can slow down time, I can practically stop it, but I can’t turn it back,” Hunter said, but at Kaldur’s unhappy look, he shrugged. “I’ll be  _civil_ ,” he offered. “And we’ll see what happens. So where’s your other half, anyway? Not visiting me when I’ve nearly been half-crippled, I see.”

“He opted to remain in Central,” Kaldur said. “He is… intent on capturing the Kid. Without you, it will still be difficult, even if Robin does know the location to one of his hideouts. I doubt Roy will give up, though.”

“Not because of  _me_ ,” Hunter mused aloud. “…What did the Kid do to tick him off?”

“In our last encounter with the Kid, Roy nearly got the best of him, but the Kid still managed to escape,” Kaldur explained. 

“How’d he manage that?” he said. 

“He pushed Roy down a flight of stairs,” Kaldur said. 

“Who hasn’t?” Hunter snorted. He had the distinct feeling that Kaldur was trying to keep a detail out of the story. Which was ridiculous. Kaldur should know better.

“And when the Kid couldn’t disarm him, he kissed Roy,” Kaldur finally admitted, and though he kept a straight face, Hunter was pretty sure Kaldur was amused by the situation. “In his surprise, Roy let the Kid go.”

“…It gets him every time, doesn’t it?” 

“All the time.”


	14. Chapter 14

Hunter’s apartment was small by most standards, but it was larger than what most students had on campus and had a lot more in the way of privacy. It saved him the trouble of having to worry that a dorm mate might wander into his room and find his vigilante paraphernalia. The number of visitors Hunter had ever had to this apartment since he’d first gotten it could be counted on one hand: the Garricks, the Allens, and Ashley. Of course, he hadn’t exactly had Ashley over since they’d broken up, and Hunter visited the Allens and the Garricks more often than he invited them back to his home. Guests were rare at his place.

So coming back home to his apartment just before midnight only to find Wally sitting outside his door was a bit of a surprise. So much of a surprise, in fact, that despite their last encounter, there wasn’t a single spark of anger. Just confusion and a mild drug-induced haze.

Wally looked up at him, eyebrows raised, looking alert at Hunter’s arrival.

“What are you doing here?” Hunter asked.

“What happened?” Wally responded immediately, scrambling up to his feet nervously. Once he was on his feet, looking down at Hunter, he suddenly looked even more flustered, constantly eyeing the wheelchair with an anxious expression.

“It was a hit and run,” Hunter said, which was true enough. Wally’s eyes shifted to the side, never able maintain contact with Hunter’s for too long. Considering their last meeting, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. “How’d you find out where I lived?”

“Oh, uh, Aunt Iris,” he said. Of course. But Wally didn’t stop the explanation there. “Well, Aunt Iris couldn’t get in contact to let one of your friends know about you, so she asked me to stop by the place she worked. And your friend asked me to get this to you.” He lifted a plastic bag that carried a to-go box inside. “She also says you need to start picking up your phone.”

Hunter immediately went through the bag that sat in his lap. He had changed into a spare change of clothes that had been supplied to him at the mountain, loose-fitted ones. His own clothes were in the bag, bundled up, along with the rest of his personal effects. He found his cell phone and found a number of missed texts messages and calls, most of them from Ashley. There were several missed phone calls from Wally, and a few voice messages that mostly consisted of muted hang-ups.

Hunter looked back at Wally, who was disguising his discomfort as he dusted off the backside of his pants. “So, Ashley’s, um…”

“My ex,” Hunter said.

“I was going to say nice,” he mumbled.

“Then you’d be wrong,” Hunter said. A blatant lie. Ashley was fantastic. At worst, she could be a little firm or way too unyielding at times. Mostly, Hunter just didn’t feel comfortable with the two of them meeting. He wondered if maybe this is what Wally felt when Hunter was with  _his_  family.

But as he watched Wally, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot, he couldn’t stay mad for too long. Not even with the residual anger from their last argument. Not when Ashley’s shift at her mom’s cafe had probably ended over an hour ago and Hunter couldn’t even begin to guess how long Wally had been sitting outside Hunter’s door waiting for him.

He went through his bag again and pulled out his house keys to unlock the door. With an annoyed face, he ended up backing up his wheelchair, leaning forward to open the door, and pushing himself through the door. When Wally didn’t follow him inside, Hunter twisted his upper body to look back at him. “You coming in?”

“Uh…”

“Or we could eat in the middle of the hallway,” he suggested dryly. Point taken, Wally walked in after him. Wally almost headed toward the couch, but paused, probably wondering whether or not that would be considered too friendly—Hunter had noticed that Wally sometimes had trouble making those distinctions—and the redhead discreetly changed directions towards the small dining room area instead, placing the to-go box on the big of spare space on the table. Wally looked around for a moment, looking unsure of what to do now.

Hunter glanced around his apartment, suddenly self-conscious of the fact that he hadn’t taken the time to clean up lately. He hadn’t bothered, considering how rare visitors were. Not that his apartment was ever really a mess, but he didn’t like the idea of Wally walking in to see, say, a bright yellow costume draped over the back of a chair or anything. Nothing really seemed out in the open except…

Hunter pushed the wheelchair forward as quickly but discreetly as he could towards the table. On the table was a mess of papers, most of them research that could be passed off as research for classes, but there was a map marking off the location of the Kid’s past robberies and suspected next targets laying on the table that Hunter really didn’t want to explain to Wally. Not that the redhead would probably understand what it was he was looking at at the moment, but precautions.

Aware that Hunter didn’t want him going through his work, Wally diverted his attention towards the rest of the apartment, deliberately looking away as Hunter shoved everything into a pile.

“Police stuff?” he asked, his back towards Hunter.

“Uh. Yeah. Confidential,” Hunter said, recalling that he had told Wally about his internship at Central’s police department. His work out of the way and sorted to the side of the table, Hunter put Ashley’s donated to-go box in his lap and rolled himself toward the kitchen. Once there, he stopped the wheelchair and paused, staring up at the cabinet far above his head and wondering how he was going to grab the plates. He glanced over at Wally, who immediately looked away again, as if he hadn’t been staring at Hunter on and off since they were outside.

Eventually, Hunter just rolled his eyes, bracing both hands against the armrests of the wheelchair before making sure his good leg had a good, solid footing, and he stood up to reach for the plate.

Wally was almost immediately there in the kitchen with him, gripping Hunter’s forearm with and staring at him with an abrupt sort of intensity and disbelief.

“What are you doing?” Wally demanded, looking up and down between Hunter and the cast on his leg with an alarmed expression. “Sit down.”

“Let go,” Hunter snapped irritably, in no mood to be babied. He felt an uncomfortable rush in his aching leg and was thankful for the prescribed painkillers Dr. Mid-Night had given him, but he doubted there’d be much of a difference if he stood up just once or twice today. “I’m not putting any weight on it.”

“Just sit!” Wally said, turning around to face Hunter and pushing him back into the chair. To Hunter’s credit, he  _was_  only standing on one leg, and Wally actually succeeded in pushing him back down.

“Ow!” Hunter shouted, and Wally immediately flinched and failed, stumbling backwards and bumping into the counter in his rush to put as much distance between himself and Hunter as possible.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry…!” he babbled frantically, with eyes so wide and a face so pale that Hunter actually felt bad for Wally.

“I was just messing with you,” Hunter admitted, only a little sheepishly as Wally glared at him with the most unamused face.

With an annoyed huff, Wally turned around to take the plates down for Hunter and then grabbed some silverware. At least, the tension had been broken. It was almost a relief, compared to the demure version of Wally from earlier. That relief was short lived, because the moment Wally looked back at Hunter, the muted version of Wally had returned.

“So…  _are_  you okay?” Wally asked as they walked back to the table, where the box had already been opened. Ashley had gotten him a whole pie. “How bad is it? Your leg?”

Pretty freaking terrible, according to the X-rays. Luckily, the Justice League had technology years beyond its time, so at least there was a decent chance Hunter wasn’t going to be limping around for the rest of his life. Wally wasn’t entirely wrong in making him sit back down though. As much as he hated it, staying on his feet for too long wasn’t a good idea.

“Not good at all,” Hunter said honestly. “But it could be a lot worse.”

“That’s good,” Wally said, looking a little relieved as he cut them pieces of pie. The concern was actually kind of nice.

“Yeah. Still going to catch the asshole who did it,” he said. He watched as Wally paused and then slid the knife over, cutting a larger piece for Hunter. “There’s a really good chance we can get him now.”

“Really?” Wally asked.

“Yeah. Found some new information.”

“New information?” Wally asked, sounding as if he were trying to sound amused, but only coming off as tired. “It’s only been a day.”

“Right. Well,” Hunter shrugged, eating his pie with the plate in one hand, fork in the other. He would have eaten normally, plate on the table, but he didn’t feel like fumbling around to get the chair out of the way to get to the table. “We still have some information on the guy who did this. We’ll catch him.”

Wally shifted uncomfortably again. “I’m sorry about before,” he finally said, stabbing at his own slice. There it was. Hunter had been expecting Wally to broach the subject by now.

Hunter really wasn’t sure what to say. That was usually the problem. What was there to say after their last argument?

He meant to ask Wally why he reacted the way he did to Hunter meeting his mom.

Instead, what he got was, “Why don’t you like me?”

From the way Wally reacted, it sounded as stupid as it felt. Even Wally, with all his anxiety, couldn’t help snickering at the comment. “What?”

“I mean…” Hunter paused and then shook his head. “No, actually, I mean it exactly like that. Why don’t you like me? I mean the things you said—”

“I was just being a dick,” Wally said, fidgeting.

“You were, but you still meant what you said,” he said. “I mean you, you’re—” Territorial as hell. “—really defensive. You  _don’t_  like me around.”

“I like you fine,” Wally insisted, which was flattering, but Hunter wasn’t buying it, even if it seemed that Wally was.

“Only when I am nowhere near your family. And then all of a sudden the anxiety is dialed up to eleven. The only explanation is that you’re overprotective and think I’m somehow dangerous to your family—which, by the way, is total bull just in case you haven’t realized—or you’re just…  _jealous_ …” His voice trailed off at the realization, and Wally’s brow creased in irritation.

“I am not  _jealous_ ,” he said, and Hunter would’ve believed him if it hadn’t made so much sense. At Hunter’s deadpan look, Wally agitatedly repeated himself. “I’m not! Why would I be jealous of you?”

That was a good question.

“I don’t know, but you are,” Hunter said evenly.

“You are so full of yourself,” Wally said, though there was no venom to his voice. There was a slight waver to his demeanor, something off in the way he crossed his arms stiffly in front of his chest and rolled his eyes. He was almost convincing, but it felt superficial. Maybe it hadn’t occurred to Wally before, but he was definitely very aware of what Hunter was talking about now. After a moment, he unfolded his arms and went back to eating the pie. “…This is actually really good.”

“How did you get the drugs?” Hunter asked suddenly. He knew it was probably a better idea to just let the subject rest, to ask Wally when he was less antsy, but the question had been plaguing Hunter since he found Wally with the V9, and he was fed up with waiting.

Wally’s eyes widened, just briefly in surprise, probably having assumed the line of questioning had been over with, but then he shrugged. “I didn’t know who they were. I didn’t know what it was, at first,” Wally said. “The night that… when my mom got… that East Grey thing.”

“You  _snuck out_?” he asked.

“My mom was  _missing_ , you think I was just going to sit around?” Wally asked. Hunter froze and then had to give him that one. “Uncle Barry and Aunt Iris were out there, why would I just stay home when I could help? …But yeah, I snuck out. It’s not as if there was anyone home to make sure I followed curfew…”

“Good point,” Hunter conceded.

“Anyway, I was digging around. And I found this really… nice wallet,” he said, wincing.

Hunter dropped the fork down on his plate, freeing up his hand to cover his face. “ _Wally_.”

“I  _know_ , I should’ve turned it in to the clean up crew, but there was no one around,” he said. “And I couldn’t resist. There was some money in there, but I had no idea what the slips of paper were. It wasn’t for writing on, and it  _had_  to be important. Or else, well, why carry it around? So I held onto it. Didn’t really decide whether or not to keep it or turn it in until some guys came around. They didn’t see me, but I heard them talking about some wonder drug. V9.”

“Did you get a good look at them?” Hunter asked. “Hear anything important?”

Wally hesitated but shook his head. “No. Sorry. I kind of hightailed it the moment I realized what I had. I mean, these are drug… people. I don’t know if they were dealers or addicts, but I did just steal their wallet. I didn’t want to stick around. And now that I knew what the patches were, I wasn’t just going to give it to someone.”

“Well, you  _should’ve_ ,” he told Wally. “The side effects of these drugs tend to be fatal, Wally—”

“I  _know_!” Wally said exasperatedly. “Well, I mean, I  _didn’t_. But I did kinda figure on my own that the sudden increase in metabolic rate would have damaging effects on cellular processes. I wasn’t going to  _use_  any of it. I just wanted to… pick it apart.”

Wally’s motivations didn’t really come as a surprise to Hunter. He had suspected that Wally hadn’t intended to use the drug when he had resisted touching it. Still, it was a relief to hear it from Wally.

“You know…” Hunter said. “I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did when I found the drugs.”

“You mean yelling at me so I couldn’t string two words together in my head?” Wally asked.

“I was talking more about threatening to use the drugs on you because you told me they weren’t drugs,” he said. In retrospect, that had probably been too harsh. “But that, too. Kind of.” Actually, he wasn’t too sorry about the yelling. Considering the severity of the drug’s side effects, he felt that anger had been rather justified.

“Yeah, well…” Wally rested his chin in his palm, leaning against the surface of the table. “…Sorry about your leg.”

It came out as a quite mumble. Hunter rolled his eyes. “I know it’s a thing for people to say they’re sorry about things that they sometimes weren’t even responsible for, but… well, I’m not accepting an apology for something you weren’t even responsible for,” he said.

“Well, I’m still sorry,” Wally said. He stood up, pushing his plate away. “Want me to take yours?” he asked, pointing at Hunter’s now-empty plate.

“I can do it myself,” he said, picking his plate up off his lap and placing it on the table, only for Wally to take it anyway, picking it up and taking it to the sink. “Or not.”

“Am I going to see you in class tomorrow?” Wally asked him.

“I had my leg snapped in half. I think that’s a good enough excuse to spend a day drugged to the gills with painkillers,” Hunter said. “So I think not.”

The next day, he ended up seeing Wally anyway, standing outside his door with a sort of awkward, hesitant grin. If he was a little more pleased by the company than usual, he could blame it on the medication.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FORTY-TWO THOUSAND WORDS AND WE ARE DONE WITH PART 2!
> 
> This part's over now so, like with the end of every part, I'm going to take a break. 
> 
> Edit: Wait... oh no, god damn it. I messed up with this schedule.
> 
> ...Okay so a one week break. Well, one and a half.
> 
> ....I'll update on the fifth, but I think if I can't get in touch with my beta and go over the last few bits soon enough, I'll have to take a small hiatus halfway through. Bleh. I have the worst timing ever, finishing this story just after the series ends and before the anniversary of this story takes place.
> 
> Blargh, I hate it when this stuff happens. 
> 
> ANYWAY, did you guys have fun? Remember, my [askbox](http://itsxandy.tumblr.com/comment) is always open for questions and reviews and stuff, as is the comment section below.

**Author's Note:**

> ...SO HOW ABOUT THAT EPISODE, GUYS?


End file.
